Black Gate – Page 663 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Check Out the Latest Fantasy Fiction at Tor.com

Friday, July 8, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Destroyer Tara Isabella Burton-small

Yeah, I’m still getting caught up, so it’s not really the latest fiction at Tor.com. But I’ve made it into April, so that’s progress!

Anyway, here’s a fine new batch of fantasy and adventure SF short fiction from Michael R. Underwood, Joan Aiken, Lavie Tidhar, Jack Nicholls, and Tara Isabella Burton, all available for free at Tor.com.

“The Destroyer” by Tara Isabella Burton
Posted April 20, edited by Ann VanderMeer. Art by Ashley Mackenzie (above right)
Fantasy, Science Fiction || In a futuristic, fascistic Rome, a brilliant, unstable scientist proves that she can transcend the human body’s limitations. The test subject? Her own daughter. A mother-daughter mad scientist story, “The Destroyer” asks how far we’ll go to secure our own legacies — and how far we’ll run to escape them.

“Dune Time” by Jack Nicholls
Posted April 19, edited by David Hartwell. Art by Mark Smith (above middle)
Contemporary Fantasy, Magical Realism || Isolated in the desert with his brother, Hasan learns that there is more to the legends of the dunes than he initially believed.

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Goth Chick News Reviews: End of Watch — Stephen King Wraps Up a Trilogy

Thursday, July 7, 2016 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

As you may know from past articles, my literary relationship with Stephen King has seen more horror-themed infidelities and follow-on love fests than Ozzy Osbourne’s marriage. Frankly, I had pretty much thrown King over permanently for his more intellectually acrobatic son Joseph King (aka Joe Hill) until nearly three years when in a fit of nostalgia over The Shining, I picked up Doctor Sleep.

And just like that, Stephen King moved back into my library.

So when the first book in King’s new Detective Bill Hodges trilogy called Mr. Mercedes was released the following year, the warm glow from meeting the adult Danny Torrance was still evident and I decided to give the new series a try, even though mystery / serial killer stories are not really my thing.

And what do you know? Like the younger, more energetic version of himself in those heady days of Salem’s Lot and Carrie, King delivered a second white-knuckled nail-biter of a tale, equal to his previous work.

Retired police detective Bill Hodges, the unlikely hero of Mr. Mercedes and Finders Keepers (book two of the trilogy), now runs an investigation agency with his partner, Holly Gibney. Holly is the sister of Hodges’ great love who died at the hands of serial killer Brady Hartsfield and also happens to be the woman who delivered the blow to Brady’s head that put him in a vegetative state.

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Regency Punk Summer Reading for Adventurous Girls: Penny Blackfeather

Thursday, July 7, 2016 M Harold Page Comments 1 comment

The Girl Reads Blackfeather — “…compares well to the Goth Girl series.”

“This is brilliant...” says “The Girl,” 12, one of my son’s friends.

We’re in the cafe of the kid’s music school and I’ve asked her what she thinks of Penny Blackfeather, a Regency Punk graphic novel that Sloth Comics sent me.

She reads it until we prise it away from her so she can dash off to her recorder lesson.

The next week, we all go for coffee and she dives back in.

She still rates it as brilliant, and thinks it compares well to the Goth Girl series.

“Morgenstern”, my steampunk-loving daughter, 8, is also mesmerised.

She reads it twice and compares it to Adventure Time, her favourite cartoon, and also pronounces it, “Brilliant!”

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July/August 2016 Analog Now on Sale

Thursday, July 7, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I love these big double issues of Analog. Chiefly because they have space for longer stories — and indeed, the latest double issue, July/August 2016, has two big novellas by Arlan Andrews, Sr. and Brad Torgersen.

In fact, this issue has several nice surprises, including fiction by Ian Creasey, John Shirley, Nick Wolven, and James Van Pelt — and a brand new short story by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, “Story Night at the Stronghold.” On top of that, there’s a special feature by editor emeritus Stanley Schmidt, titled “THE END, or, Leaving the Reader Satisfied.” Here’s editor Trevor Quachri’s teaser for the issue on the Analog website.

O, the double issue! I sing your praises! What can’t you do? Present a lead story ab out a future where social media and augmented reality have converged with mixed results? Indeed, we have “No Strangers Any More,” by Ian Creasey.

Can you give us not one but two novellas? Yes! When you take a path, it necessarily means there are other paths you cannot go down, and when humanity as a whole goes down one path, well . . . you’ll see, in Brad R. Torgersen’s “Purytans.” We’ll also look in on the travels of Arlan Andrews’ Rist in “Fall.”

What of material by luminaries like John Shirley, or Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle? Indubitably! In fact, there will be both! See “Cory for Coriolis” and “Story Night at the Stronghold” for proof that your eyes do not deceive you!

Perhaps more short pieces, fiction and nonfiction alike, from authors such as Nick Wolven, Stanley Schmidt, James Van Pelt, Elisabeth R. Adams, Andrew Barton, Sean Vivier, Christina De La Rocha, and Karl Bunker? I believe we can accommodate you there, yes.

And columns. Oh the columns. Never will you see columns such as these again . . . except perhaps in the issue that follows.

All that for roughly the price of a paperback! How can you go wrong?

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New Treasures: United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas

Thursday, July 7, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Amazon.com’s high concept series The Man in the High Castle, based on the famous novel by Philip K. Dick, became a major hit for the online retailer, and it was renewed for a second season late last year.

I have not yet seen the series, but I find myself in total agreement with Peter Tieryas’s implied critique of the whole concept: that it would be 300% better with giant robots. Seriously, I think this Tieryas guy is on to something. Sure, there isn’t an artistic or creative endeavor in Western Civilization that wouldn’t be improved by adding giant robots (“Are you enjoying that double scoop pistachio ice-cream cone, young lady? Here, try it with giant robots.” See what I mean?), but there’s something about World War II alternate history that just screams, “More giant robots, please!” Come on, you know what I’m talking about.

I received a free copy of Tieryas’ second novel United States of Japan at the Nebula Awards back in April, and I finally settled in with it yesterday. It seems to be exactly what it promises: an action-packed detective story/alternate history successor to The Man in the High Castle. With honkin’ big robots. Financial Times says that “With its giant military robots, sumo wrestlers and body-transforming technology, [it’s] a gleeful love letter to Japanese pop culture,” and Lightspeed calls it “A hell of a ride, with plot twists as history is written and rewritten right in front of you… an ending as powerful as the iron grip of the godlike Emperor.”

United States of Japan was published by Angry Robot on March 1, 2016. It is 398 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by John Liberto. Amazon.com currently has the Kindle version available for just $1.99 — grab it while you can.

Noise About Xignals

Wednesday, July 6, 2016 Matthew David Surridge Comments 8 comments

I took a break from cutting the grass around the house. It was a hot day, and the chore always took a while. “Look what I found,” my aunt greeted me, as I went indoors and dropped into a chair. She’d been cleaning up, preparing to move into the cottage, and she’d been discovering things tucked away and forgotten long before, as one does. She handed me a copy of Xignals.

Years ago, back in the twentieth century, Xignals had been the in-house newsletter of Waldenbooks’ Otherworlds Club, a buyers’ club program for science fiction and fantasy readers. I was never a member, but I’d pick up a copy of Xignals when I’d go with my aunt and grandparents over the border from their summer cottage in Philipsburg, Quebec, to have dinner in Burlington, Vermont. There was a Waldenbooks in one of the shopping malls in Burlington, where we’d stop after eating, and I’d take an inexcusably long time browsing the science fiction section before buying a book to take back to Philipsburg. And, often, grab a copy of Xignals with it.

In 2016 I sat and read this copy of Xignals for perhaps the first time in over twenty-five years. It was dated August/September 1988, which means it had come out as I was turning 15. It was a 16-page booklet, 8 sheets of 11-by-17-inch paper folded over, black and white with greyscale images and green lines and fills. I was fascinated by the thing, its edges nibbled by field mice seeking a home during some winter between 1988 and 2016. It brought to my mind not a rush of Proustian reminiscence, but a sense of significance in difference. I was made conscious of the way the future was conceived then, based on the way the world then operated, and the way the world operates differently now.

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Roman Lusitania Opens at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid

Wednesday, July 6, 2016 Sean McLachlan Comments 0 Comment

20160702_104130

Statue of a Lusitani warrior, 1st century AD.
Note the torc and arm bands, indicating high rank

It’s the start of the summer exhibition season here in Madrid, and the National Archaeological Museum is offering a free exhibition called Lusitania Romana, about the Roman province that took up much of what is now western Spain and Portugal.

The province got its name from the native Lusitani, who were either a Celtiberian people or an older ethnic group culturally influenced by the Celts, depending on which historian you read. The Romans fought these people from from 155 to 139 BC, eventually defeating them. The Lusitani continued a guerrilla war for another century.

When the province was created in 27 BC, the capital was set as Emerita Augusta, now the modern city of Mérida in Spain, which still retains some fascinating Roman ruins including a well-preserved theater, plus an excellent museum. With pacification came acculturation, and soon the region had several sizeable cities with all the usual Roman public works, and the countryside had numerous villas with some fine mosaics that have survived to this day.

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Future Treasures: Drowned Worlds: Tales from the Anthropocene and Beyond, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Wednesday, July 6, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Jonathan Strahan has edited some extremely impressive anthologies. In fact, we assessed his recent Meeting Infinity as the most successful anthology of 2016 (using our own highly subjective yardstick, of course.) His latest, Drowned Worlds, contains all-original fiction by some of the biggest names in SF, including Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken Liu, Paul McAuley, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Rachel Swirsky, Charlie Jane Anders, Lavie Tidhar, Jeffrey Ford, and James Morrow, and it promises to be just as interesting. On his Coode Street blog, Jonathan summarizes it thusly:

I think it’s sharp, pointed, timely and sometimes satirical. I think it’s about who we are when faced with disaster, and not about disaster. I think it makes for good reading.

Here’s the publisher’s take:

Last call for the Gone World…

We live in a time of change. The Anthropocene Age – the time when human-induced climate change radically reshapes the world – is upon us. Sea water is flooding the streets of Florida, island nations are rapidly disappearing beneath the waves, the polar icecaps are a fraction of what they once were, and distant, exotic places like Australia are slowly baking in the sun.

Drowned Worlds asks fifteen of the top science fiction and fantasy writers working today to look to the future, to ask how will we survive? Do we face a period of dramatic transition and then a new technology-influenced golden age, or a long, slow decline? Swim the drowned streets of Boston, see Venice disappear beneath the waves, meet a woman who’s turned herself into a reef, traverse the floating garbage cities of the Pacific, search for the elf stones of Antarctica, or spend time in the new, dark Dust Bowl of the American mid-west. See the future for what it is: challenging, exciting, filled with adventure, and more than a little disturbing.

Whether here on Earth or elsewhere in our universe, Drowned Worlds give us a glimpse of a new future, one filled with romance and adventure, all while the oceans rise…

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Series Fantasy: Apparatus Infernum by A. A. Aguirre

Tuesday, July 5, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I get a lot of review copies in the mail, and I buy a great many books online (Amazon tells me I’ve placed 15 orders in the past 30 days, which seems like kind of a lot. And it’s probably best if we don’t discuss eBay.) But I still enjoy my Saturday trips to the bookstore, where I can leisurely browse Barnes & Noble’s SF & Fantasy section. Even for someone who puts effort into staying on top of SF publishing every single day, there are always surprises.

It was a pleasant surprise a few weeks ago when I stumbled on A. A. Aguirre’s intriguing two-volume steampunk/noir/crime series Apparatus Infernum, which consists of Bronze Gods and Silver Mirrors. A.A. Aguirre is the pseudonym for Ann & Andres Aguirre, a husband-wife writing team. Ann Aguire, as we’ve noted previously is an extraordinarily prolific fantasy and SF writer, producing some 22 novels in five years, including the Sirantha Jax science fiction adventures, the Corine Solomon urban fantasies, the YA post-apocalyptic dystopian Razorland trilogy, the dark SF series The Dred Chronicles, and many more.

The Apparatus Infernum series looks like a pleasing combination of fantasy and noir drama… and it has the added attraction of not being ten books long. Here’s the description for the first book.

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Try Out Blind Spot, a New Magazine of French Science Fiction

Tuesday, July 5, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

When I was at the Nebula Awards weekend in May, I met a charming young man named Julien Wacquez, the co-editor of the French SF magazine Angle Mort, which publishes English SF in translation for French readers. I learned that he and his co-editor, René-Marc Dolhen, were launching a brand new English magazine to bring the best of French SF to English audiences, Blind Spot. He was kind enough to send me a copy of the first issue last week, and it looks terrific. Here’s René-Marc and Julien, from their introduction.

Angle Mort was founded in France in 2010 to translate innovative science fiction stories written by authors such as Aliette de Bodard, Jeffrey Ford, Kij Johnson, Kelly Link, Ian McDonald, Vandana Singh, and to publish French original narratives written by Stéphane Beauverger, David Calvo, Thomas Day, Jean-Claude Dunyach, Léo Henry, and Laurent Kloetzer among others. Our work has been recognized several times by the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire and nominated as “best translated work of the year” or “best short story of the year…”

Going forward, we wish to widen our audiences to pursue our two main goals:

1 – Bolster the ties between French and American science fiction, by launching a new magazine, Blind Spot, that translates French stories into English. We think that French science fiction is rich from finding new ways to describe human experiences and contradictions, the weight of structures upon our lives, and the role of collective entities on our destiny.

2 – Bridge art, science, and literature, by supporting people who try to remold original perceptions of the self or the surrounding world, regardless of whether their works are fictional stories, academic papers, or visual arts, as long as they relate to science fiction.

Both French and English online magazines owned by the group are conceived as an endeavor to find new languages, new ways of telling true stories. They will be published at a frequency of two issues per year each. The narratives will be available for free on their dedicated website and exclusive additional content (interviews with contributors) can be accessed by ordering the complete online issue for $3. The proceeds will help us pay our contributors and translators.

Read the first story, Jean-Claude Dunyach’s “Landscape with Intruders,” free online here. And buy the first issue in PDF, epub and mobi formats for just $3 here. Broaden your horizons, and support a new SF magazine!