Black Gate – Page 685 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: The Monstrumologist Series by Rick Yancey

Saturday, February 20, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

If you recognize the name Rick Yancey, it’s probably because of his bestselling 5th Wave trilogy, the first volume of which was turned into a movie late last year.

But he’s also the author of the four-volume Monstrumologist series, featuring the orphan Will Henry and his master Doctor Warthrop, monster hunters in the Industrial Age of Nineteenth Century New England. Booklist said the first volume, The Monstrumologist, “might just be the best horror novel of the year,” and VOYA called it “gothic horror at its finest and most disturbing.” The books were first published in hardcover by Simon & Schuster in 2009-2013, but now Saga Press has brought the entire series back into print in mass market paperback.

The first book opens as a grave robber brings Will and Dr. Warthrop the body of a young girl, entwined with the corpse of the thing that was eating her. Anthropophagi are supposed to be extinct in North American… and if they’re not stopped, they could consume the world.

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The Amazing Authentically Authentic Latina Author!

Saturday, February 20, 2016 Silvia Moreno-Garcia Comments 3 comments

Categorization is a funny thing when you’re Latin American. Everything I write, people want to call it magic realism.

And then, when I write science fiction, sometimes people have no idea it’s science fiction because they don’t have enough cultural info to figure it out. When you’re writing a dystopia or an alternate history set in the USA, it’s pretty easy to figure out it’s dystopia or an alternate history. Everyone knows the USA! Hey, I knew your president cut a cherry tree and you had a Civil War when I was like seven years old and couldn’t speak English.

But is it fact or fiction that in Mexico when you apply for a job people can ask you to state your age, marriage status, and religion, and affix your photo? Sure! That’s not a dystopia. So sometimes I write a story and outsiders think, “That’s too fantastical,” or they confuse an ordinary detail with the fantastic.

More than once I’ve been told something is not “science fiction” or not “science fiction enough.” Needs more hyperdrive. There’s also the dreaded “doesn’t ring true.”

Doesn’t ring true generally means people expect you to bring in the exotic. They’ll be like “I once went to Acapulco so this gives me super great knowledge about your country and therefore this is not exotic enough.” Awesome. They want you to show a sarape, bring out the donkey. Check out the rooster in The Three Caballeros. That’s the sense of place you should aim for.

Someone once wanted me to change a name because it looked weird. It was a real name used in Mexico.

In Mexico City there are women-only designated subway cars so you won’t get groped. There are subway gangs with youths, hair combed back with too much gel who go to reggaeton shows, and like a story I read online, if you encounter a bunch of them it looks like you’re living in a “Spanish-language remake of The Warriors.”

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Black Static #50 Now on Sale

Saturday, February 20, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

British horror magazine Black Static #50, cover-dated January-February, is now available. It sports a creepy and very effective cover by Vince Haig, illustrating Georgina Bruce’s “White Rabbit” (click the image at right for a bigger version.)

This issue contains six stories:

“White Rabbit” by Georgina Bruce
“Man of the House” by V.H. Leslie
“Child of Thorns” by Ray Cluley
“Greenteeth” by Gary Budden
“Foul is Fair” by Tyler Keevil
“Bug Skin” by Tim Casson

The magazine’s regular columns include Coffinmaker’s Blues by Stephen Volk (on “10 Ways Comedy and Horror Are Almost the Same Thing”) and Notes From the Borderland by Lynda E. Rucker (“Meet the New Goth, Same as the Old Goth”), plus two review columns: Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray reviews); and Case Notes by Peter Tennant (book reviews).

Issue 50 is nearly 100 pages and comes packed with new dark fantasy and horror, and top-notch art. Black Static is the sister magazine of Interzone (see the latest issue here); both are published by TTA Press in the UK. The distinguished Andy Cox is the editor of both.

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Future Treasures: Good Girls by Glen Hirshberg

Friday, February 19, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Motherless Child, the opening novel is what was to become the Motherless Child trilogy, was met with a flood of praise when it first appeared in 2014. The Los Angles Review of Books labeled it “One of the best books of the year,” and Elizabeth Hand called it “A subversive, thrilling novel that subverts everything we’ve come to expect from tales that traffic in the undead.” And The Washington Post said, “The final standoff will leave readers breathless.” Now the creepy vampire saga continues in the sequel, Good Girls, on sale next week from Tor Books.

Reeling from the violent death of her daughter and a confrontation with the Whistler — the monster who wrecked her life — Jess has fled the South for a tiny college town in New Hampshire. There she huddles in a fire-blackened house with her crippled lover, her infant grandson, and the creature that was once her daughter’s best friend and may or may not be a threat.

Rebecca, a college student orphaned in childhood, cares for Jess’s grandson, and finds in Jess’s house the promise of a family she has never known, but also a terrifying secret.

Meanwhile, unhinged and unmoored, the Whistler watches from the rooftops and awaits his moment.

And deep in the Mississippi Delta, the evil that spawned him stirs…

Good Girls will be published by Tor Books on February 23, 2016. It is 349 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Alejandro Colucci.

See all our coverage in the best in upcoming fantasy here.

Superhero TV: Remembering Fun

Friday, February 19, 2016 mariebilodeau Comments 3 comments

This series on superheroes was started by Derek Künsken when he chatted Supergirl! Check it out!

There are times in each of our lives when we don’t feel like embracing that darkness on TV. When we’re tired of murder and drama and stoic heroes with perfect cleft chins (scratch that last one, actually. I couldn’t get tired of that).

Sometimes, life is dark enough (loss of loved one, running out of ice cream, losing a toe, etc.) that we want to just watch something fun. We want to watch stories that both fulfill the need for heroic action while letting us have some bloody fun. We want to escape in our TV sets. (Not à la Poltergeist, mind you.)

I love heroes. I’ve loved them since I was a non-speaking English kid and thought He-Man and She-Ra were married (theirs would have been very sturdy children). I also have a soft spot for superheroes. I’ve binge watched way too many superhero episodes on Netflix so far.

My latest binge was The Flash. I hadn’t checked out The Flash yet because of Arrow. If there was to be one more flashback scene and stern, misunderstood look, I thought I’d rip my right ear off and toss it at Stephen Amell’s screen projected hotness.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1953: A Retro-Review

Friday, February 19, 2016 Matthew Wuertz Comments 2 comments

I’ve already covered the $6,500 novel-writing sham announced in this issue in a previous post. So let’s jump straight into the contents.

“The Old Die Rich” by H. L. Gold — Periodically, senior citizens are dying of starvation, yet they have large sums of money in banks or in cash. Mark Weldon tags along with his friend, Officer Lou Pape, whenever the police find out about the incidents. Mark’s intrigued by the circumstances and feels compelled to understand the pattern, even if it’s a matter of being too fearful to deplete their savings.

Mark’s investigation leads him to May Roberts, a young woman who hires seniors for unspecified purposes. He tries to break into her apartment at night, only to be captured. She decides to use him as her latest employee.

The job is to travel into the past and place bets on known outcomes or invest in the stock market at key moments. Mark slips from one time period to the next, spending a varying amount of time in each destination. But anything he interacts with in the past, such as food, can’t come forward to the present with him; it ages as though it’s still part of the past, becoming dust.

Gold’s story has good pacing, but I couldn’t get past his rules of time travel. If someone moves into the past and can’t eat because anything ingested becomes dust, then how could someone breathe? It didn’t seem reasonable to me.

“Games” by Katherine MacLean — Ronny plays outside, imagining a Native American battle scene. Except that as he’s acting it out, he becomes one of them. And then he becomes an old man, dying of starvation — someone who refuses to give information to those who’ve held him imprisoned. It’s frightfully real for Ronny, and he doesn’t understand how it’s happening.

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Taos Toolbox, a Two Week Master Class in Science Fiction and Fantasy

Friday, February 19, 2016 Emily Mah Comments 0 Comment

My project this month was to put together a promo video for Taos Toolbox, which is run by my longtime friend, Walter Jon Williams, and Nancy Kress. It will run from July 10-23rd this year. I remember when Walter put the first session of this workshop together, and right from the start, it has helped authors turn rough draft manuscripts into traditionally published novels.

A non-exhaustive list of Toolbox novels includes:

Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon
Alan Smale’s Clash of Eagles Trilogy
Gail Strickland’s Night of Pan, the Oracle of Delphi Trilogy

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The February Magazine Rack

Friday, February 19, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The last two weeks have produced some tremendous new fiction and articles. We started our coverage of TwoMorrows Publishing’s altogether splendid comics magazine Back Issue with issue #86, containing their giant-sized look at Marvel Bronze Age Giant comics. For fans of classic magazine art, our man Doug Ellis dug into his massive collection to examine early interior illustrations from Kelly Freas and Richard Powers. For vintage magazine readers, we took a look at Galaxy magazine’s $6,500 Novel-Writing Sham from 1953, and Thomas M. Disch’s detailed review of the Best Science Fiction of 1979, from the February 1981 issue of F&SF. For those looking for Award recommendations, we surveyed the annual Locus Recommended Reading List, compiled by the editors of Locus magazine, and the always-reliable Rich Horton’s Hugo Recs. Finally, Fletcher Vredenburgh contributes his January Short Story Roundup, reviewing Swords and Sorcery 48, Grimdark Magazine #6, and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #27.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our Late January Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

As we’ve mentioned before, all of these magazines are completely dependent on fans and readers to keep them alive. Many are marginal operations for whom a handful of subscriptions may mean the difference between life and death. Why not check one or two out, and try a sample issue? There are magazines here for every budget, from completely free to $35/issue. If you find something intriguing, I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on a subscription. I think you’ll find it’s money very well spent.

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Goth Chick News: Sean Young in a Darling New Indy Horror Pic

Thursday, February 18, 2016 Sue Granquist Comments 3 comments

Two years ago at Days of the Dead in Chicago, during a brief chat with Sean Young, the actress revealed she was just signed to do another indy horror flick following the then-recent-release of Jug Face (VOD).

Of course, she also shared that she was moving to New York and having a garage sale — did I want a second-hand, 1950’s patio set for $1,500, and could we all just boycott any new iteration of Blade Runner since Ridley Scott would not return her calls?

Though we do not know the eventual fate of the patio furniture, and the yet-to-be-titled Blade Runner project remains in pre-production, we now know the identity of that other indy horror film, and it looks pretty darn interesting.

Late last week, Screen Media Films released the official trailer and theatrical one-sheet for Mickey Keating’s new thriller, Darling, on VOD and in limited theaters April 1, 2016.

Keating’s psychological horror story, “Begins as a lonely young woman (Lauren Ashley Carter) moves into an old, mysterious Manhattan mansion. Hired as a caretaker, it’s not long before she discovers the estate’s haunted reputation and troubling past. These stories slowly transform into a backdrop for her twisted and violent descent into madness…”

You’d think by this time, everyone would know it’s a bad idea to accept the caretaker job in a creepy old mansion, even if it’s located in the heart of the city rather than on a lonesome Colorado mountainside.

But go ahead, see for yourself…

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New Treasures: Black Arts by Andrew Prentice and Jonathan Weil

Thursday, February 18, 2016 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

One thing about being part of the Black Gate community… you never lack for great book recs. This morning I was at Peadar Ó Guilín’s blog, Frozen Stories, and stumbled on this brief review.

I very much enjoyed Prentice and Weil’s Black Arts. It’s a YA fantasy about a thief in Elizabethan London. I know, I know, you think you’ve seen this movie before. But this has a delightful creepyness about it — just read the prologue in the Amazon free sample chapters. I also like how when the main character messes up, the consequences are often very severe. It brings out the peril, I find, oh yes.

The gorgeous cover on the UK edition (at right) didn’t hurt either. Black Arts is the opening volume of The Books of Pandemonium. Here’s the description.

Devils in the stones. All around us…

London, 1592 – a teeming warren of thieves and cut-throats. But when scrunty Jack the nipper cuts the wrong purse, he stumbles into a more dangerous London than he has ever imagined — a city where magic is real and deadly.

Moving through a shadow world of criminals and fanatics, spies and magicians, Jack is set on a path of revenge. But he is starting to see London for what it truly is.

A city of devils.

Black Arts was published by David Fickling Books on March 1, 2012 in the UK. It is 496 pages in hardcover. The Fickling paperback edition will be released in the UK on May 5 2016, priced at £7.99. US readers can also order the earlier edition (with a different cover) through most online sellers.