Black Gate – Page 663 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Otto Binder on John W. Campbell

Wednesday, March 30, 2016 Doug Ellis Comments 0 Comment

John W. Campbell (photo by Astounding cover artist Hubert Rogers)

Back to Otto Binder letters today. This one, from Binder to his friend, Jack Darrow, dated May 23, 1937, was written just before Binder was cut loose from Otis Adelbert Kline’s literary agency, which happened on June 1 of that year. As a result of his job upheaval, Binder spent some time, unsuccessfully, trying to land a gig as an editor (and a few years later interviewed with Ziff-Davis re: the Amazing Stories opening before it was given to Ray Palmer).

The letter is primarily of interest due to its discussion of John W. Campbell, a few months before Campbell would become editor of Astounding. It’s a shame that no more detailed record of the story telling game played at Binder’s house between him, Dr. John Clark, Frank Belknap Long, Campbell and Campbell’s wife exists; it would have been fascinating to sit in on this! Binder is clearly a fan of Campbell’s fiction (later on, when he found it difficult to sell to him at Astounding, he was not nearly as much a fan of his editing).

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Take a Daily Trip Back to the Future with Galactic Journey

Wednesday, March 30, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Rich Horton and Matthew Wuertz have been writing retro-reviews of vintage SF magazines for Black Gate for years, and they have a lot of fans. In fact, it seems to me there’s a steadily growing interest in classic SF, and SF magazines, and a fresh crop of websites popping up to feed that interest. One of the best I’ve found is Gideon Marcus’ Galactic Journey, which reviews SF magazines as they appeared, 55 years ago.

Step through a portal that leads 55 years to the past. 1961: A youthful President named Jack Kennedy promises to reinvigorate America. Formal relations with Communist Cuba have been severed. The first American Mercury flight, piloted by a chimpanzee, anticipates an impending manned mission. Science fiction is a burgeoning field in print and on screen. It is the world of the Galactic Journey.

Jaunt back five and a half decades and dive into the sci-fi and Space Race headlines of the day. See the world through the eyes of a fan with a vintage time frame, but a progressive mindset.

At the Hugo-recommended Galactic Journey (www.galacticjourney.org), you’ll experience the world of day by day, exactly 55 years ago. You’ll stroll down memory lane — or be immersed in a whole new world. Read the in-depth articles on each satellite launch, with behind-the-scenes looks at the people who made them fly. Enjoy the thorough, slightly snarky, and never dull reviews of fiction and films, with links to copies of the reviewed works so you can follow along at home. Live an entirely different time without leaving the comfort of your screen.

Gideon covers F&SF and Analog every month, and the bi-monthly Galaxy and IF in alternating months. He’s looking for reviewers to cover Amazing and Fantastic. The blog has been active since October 2013, starting its coverage in late 1958.

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March 2016 Apex Magazine Now on Sale

Wednesday, March 30, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

It’s a pretty star-studded line up this issue of Apex, with fiction from Lavie Tidhar, Elizabeth Bear, Jason Sanford, and Travis Heermann. Jason Sizemore gives us the complete scoop in his editorial.

Our three original works this month are all over the place thematically. In Lavie Tidhar’s novelette “Agent of V.A.L.I.S.”, the protagonist is a forgotten science fiction writer who gets involved in an adventure containing Philip K. Dick, Jesus Christ, and an all-powerful sentient AI. Jason Sanford’s story “Death Flowers of Never Forgotten Love” posits what if we had the technology to alter our memories of the recently deceased. “Screaming Without a Mouth” by Travis Heerman mines the unsettling fog of J-horror with modern technology in a memorable and depressing manner — a story that our readers will recognize as belonging in no other publication than Apex Magazine.

We welcome Elizabeth Bear back to our pages with “Dolly.” Her reprint about emerging sentience and a murder is a recent classic of the genre.

Russell Dickerson interviews cover artist Vincent Sammy about how to create horror within art without resorting to over-the-top gore. Andrea Johnson questions author Travis Heerman about the use of an epistolary format and productivity. Rounding out the issue are five great poems from five great poets: Rodney Gomez, Caleb J. Oakes, Matthew Chamberlin, Annie Neugebauer, and David Barber.

Our podcast this month is “Death Flowers of Never Forgotten Love” by Jason Sanford.

Here’s the complete TOC, with links to all the free content.

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New Treasures: Brutal Pantomimes by Rhys Hughes

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Rhys Hughes is an amazingly prolific short story writer with dozens of collections to his credit, including The Smell of Telescopes (2000), Nowhere Near Milk Wood (2002), and Bone Idle in the Charnel House (2014). His novels include The Percolated Stars (2003), The Young Dictator (2013), and Captains Stupendous (2014).

His latest is a handsome new collection of 10 stories (most previously unpublished) from Egaeus Press, with a cover by František Tichý and interior illustrations by Jacques Callot. Check it out.

Brutal Pantomimes contains ten tales of absurd exoticism, weird adventure and wild fantasy from the shockingly prolific and highly acclaimed Rhys Hughes. Most of the stories, novellettes and novella included have not previously been published and some are regarded by their author to be amongst his best works.

Enjoy pirate shenanigans, a globe of the Earth that is a voodoo doll, the dubious gifts of a Greek god, impossible angles, improbable sciences, impractical philosophies, a rare tropical yeti in a submarine and so much more. Featuring an introduction by Michael Cisco…

The book is a lithographically printed, 256 page sewn hardback with colour endpapers and cover by František Tichý, as well as illustrations throughout by Jacques Callot. It is limited to 300 copies.

Brutal Pantomimes was published by Egaeus Press on February 6, 2016. It is 256 pages, priced at £32.00 (including postage). The cover is by František Tichý. Order directly at the Egaeus Press website.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Win a Copy of The Emperor’s Railroad, First Book of The Dreaming Cities by Guy Haley!

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Two weeks ago we had a look at Tor.com‘s impressive catalog of recent fantasy titles, and gave away free copies of each of their March releases. Today, we’d like to do something just as exciting: give you a chance to win one of three advance copies of Guy Haley’s new novella The Emperor’s Railroad, the opening installment of a terrific new adventure fantasy series, The Dreaming Cities.

What’s it about? Zombies! City States! Prehistoric beasts! Mutants and machine relics! Check out this awesome description.

Global war devastated the environment, a zombie-like plague wiped out much of humanity, and civilization as we once understood it came to a standstill. But that was a thousand years ago, and the world is now a very different place.

Conflict between city states is constant, superstition is rife, and machine relics, mutant creatures and resurrected prehistoric beasts trouble the land. Watching over all are the silent Dreaming Cities. Homes of the angels, bastion outposts of heaven on Earth. Or so the church claims. Very few go in, and nobody ever comes out.

Until now…

How do you win a copy? Easy! Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the subject “The Emperor’s Railroad.” That’s all it takes! Three winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries, and each will receive one of our precious advance proofs.

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Vintage Treasures: Machines That Kill, edited by Fred Saberhagen & Martin Harry Greenberg

Tuesday, March 29, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Today’s Vintage Treasure is a fine example of a recently extinct species: the mass market anthology.

Allow me a moment to mourn the loss of this beautiful and now-vanished creature. In days gone by, mass market anthologies thundered in vast herds across bookstore shelves, terrorizing lesser tomes. A single bookstore ecosystem could support a vast number of anthologies with a spellbinding array of thematic plumage, from horror to romantic fantasy to sword & sorcery and far future SF. In recent years, publishers such as DAW kept a dwindling number of anthologies alive in captivity for breeding purposes, but these efforts generally resulted in weak-blooded specimens about cats and unicorns. Today, the only relatives of the mass market anthology that survive are its larger cousins, the trade paperback and small press hardcover.

But not so long ago this creature strode proudly across the publishing savannah, introducing the curious to new writers, helping readers discover a wide range of different voices they might not otherwise encounter. The one I want to talk about today is the 1984 Ace paperback Machines That Kill, edited by Fred Saberhagen & Martin Harry Greenberg.

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That Movie About the Guy Who’s Stranded on Mars

Monday, March 28, 2016 William I. Lengeman III Comments 3 comments

Robinson Crusoe on Mars
Paramount Pictures, 1964
Directed by Byron Haskin

(There will be spoilers.)

So there’s this movie about a guy who finds himself in the rather grim position of being stranded on Mars — all by his lonesome (more or less – but we’ll get to that).

I think you probably thought you knew the one, but it’s actually not that one. Robinson Crusoe on Mars debuted about a half century before that other, more popular, “guy stranded on Mars” movie. I haven’t seen The Martian or read the book, so I can’t compare the two. I’ll confine myself to commenting on the earlier movie.

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Future Treasures: Pathfinder Tales: Hellknight by Liane Merciel

Monday, March 28, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Liane Merciel is the author of Dragon Age: Last Flight and The River Kings’ Road. Her first two Pathfinder Tales novels, Nightglass and Nightblade, both followed the adventures of Isiem, raised as a wizard-priest of the dark god Zon-Kuthon in the grim nation of Nidal.

For her third Pathfinder Tales novel she switches setting to the city of Westcrown, and introduces us to the devil-blooded Jheraal, a member of the brutal organization of warriors known as the Hellknights, dedicated to maintaining law and order at any cost. When a serial killer starts targeting hellspawn like Jheraal and her child, Jheraal is forced to partner with a paladin and a cunning diabolist to defeat an ancient enemy to whom even death is no deterrent.

Pathfinder Tales: Hellknight will be published by Tor Books on April 5, 2016. It is 418 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Jason Rainville. It also includes a 14-page sneak peek of Tim Pratt’s upcoming novel Liar’s Bargain (sequel to Liar’s Blade and Liar’s Island), and 13 bonus pages of ads for other Pathfinder novels and game books, which were a lot of fun to flip through.

March 2016 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

Monday, March 28, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The cover story for the March 2016 Lightspeed is Caroline M. Yoachim’s “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station, Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0.” You have to admit, as title’s go, that one’s pretty darn good. The cover artist is Reiko Murakami.

The ebook-exclusive reprint this month is Mark W. Tiedemann’s novella “Miller’s Wife,” which originally appeared in Black Gate 4. Here’s what Rich Horton said about it when he reviewed it in the January 2004 issue of Locus.

The centerpiece of the Fall issue of Black Gate is Mark Tiedemann’s impressive novella “Miller’s Wife.” Egan Ginter is fleeing another failed relationship in the big city; he hopes a couple weeks at a friend’s house in the Ozark town of Saletcroix will heal him. But something odd is going on — Saletcroix’s valley is dying, and a bad run of luck is plaguing the townspeople… Tiedemann maintains the suspense very well, and resolves the story just that little bit unexpectedly to make it memorable.

Rich made “Miller’s Wife” his Recommended Story of the Month.

In his editorial, John Joseph Adams talks about the impressive success Lightpseed and its sister magazine Nightmare have had in the 2016 Awards season.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Elric & “The Jade Man’s Eyes”

Monday, March 28, 2016 Bob Byrne Comments 7 comments

Being an avid Black Gate reader, you know that we devoted a lot of attention to the various works of Conan’s creator last year with our ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series. I was very much a latecomer to Conan, as well as Howard in general. I’ve made up a lot of ground on Solomon Kane, El Borak and others, but I’ve still got a slew of Tor paperbacks featuring the Cimmerian that I haven’t read yet, among other stuff.

However, one fantasy series that I delved far deeper into at a much younger age was Michael Moorcock’s saga of Elric and the Eternal Champion. To my middle school, Dungeons and Dragons-playing mind, that stuff, with those awesome DAW covers, was pure gold. In fact, White Wolf would have been FAR better served to use one of those instead of the craptacular cover they put on Elric: The Stealer of Souls in 1998. It is beyond awful and I’m not going to include it in this post. You can Google it if you doubt me, but I’d take my word for it.

I was going through some boxes of books that aren’t on my shelves and I came across the Dell paperback of Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords #2. First published in hardback in 1974, it included a new story of the pale Melnibonian, “The Jade Man’s Eyes.” And with a Frank Frazetta cover, it’s miles ahead of the aforementioned White Wolf cover as well.

This collection has an interesting introduction that talks about Howard’s Conan as the birth of sword and sorcery (remember: forty-plus years ago and pre-internet, what we now regard as common knowledge and what’s popular and respected often wasn’t the case then).

Carter tells of the creation of The Swordsmen and Sorceror’s Guild of America, Ltd. (SAGA), including himself, L. Sprague de Camp and John Jakes. Fritz Lieber, Mike Moorcock and Jack Vance were added soon after, followed by Poul Anderson and Andre Norton. I imagine you’ll see a SAGA post here somewhere down the line.

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