Black Gate – Page 689 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

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.

…

Read More Read More

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.

…

Read More Read More

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.

…

Read More Read More

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

…

Read More Read More

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.

…

Read More Read More

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…

…

Read More Read More

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.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in January

Thursday, February 18, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

David G. Hartwell; Photo by Andrew Porter

The most widely read article at Black Gate last month was Andy Duncan’s obituary for Tor senior editor David G. Hartwell, the founder of the World Fantasy Convention and one of the most accomplished editors this field has ever seen.

In the last few weeks we’ve compiled several articles on David’s most popular books, including:

The Masterpieces of Fantasy
The Dark Descent and The World Treasury of Science Fiction
The Early Horror Paperbacks
Foundations of Fear and The Ascent of Wonder

Coming in a close second was M. Harold Page’s look back at some of the best classic adventure fantasy, “Some Vintage Genre Fiction Still Worth Reading (and Why),” followed by our terrifying giant bug report, “I Don’t Mean to Alarm Anyone, But We’ve Discovered Giant Insects on Monster Island.”

Rounding out the Top Five were M. Harold Page’s Vintage Treasures report on The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour, and Fletcher Vredenburgh’s “Guides to Worlds Fantastic and Strange.”

The Top 10 articles for January also included Peter McLean’s look at writing modern noir fantasy, E.E. Knight’s review of the PC Game Endless Legend (which my son Drew can’t seem to stop playing), M. Harold Page’s examination of the writing lessons contained in Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum, Bob Byrne’s look at the R-Rated Nero Wolfe, and the first installment of our Hartwell tribute, a look at the Masterpieces of Fantasy volumes.

The complete list of Top Articles for January follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles, online fiction, and blog categories for the month.

…

Read More Read More

Prime Announces Table of Contents for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016, edited by Paula Guran

Thursday, February 18, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

My favorite book last year was The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015, edited by Paula Guran. Packed full of the best and most ambitious short SF and fantasy of the year, it was also a terrific bargain, collecting novellas by Patrick Rothfuss, Nancy Kress, Genevieve Valentine, K. J. Parker, James S. A. Corey, and others — including several that had been previously published only in expensive limited edition formats.

Prime and Paula Guran have announced the line-up for this year’s volume, and it looks even better, with widely acclaimed tales by Usman Malik, C.S.E. Cooney, Aliette de Bodard, Nnedi Okorafor, K. J. Parker, and many others — including two standalone Tor.com releases, Binti and The Last Witness, that would cost you more than the price of this book alone. Here’s the complete list:

“The Citadel of Weeping Pearls” by Aliette de Bodard (Asimov’s SF, Oct/Nov 2015)
“The Bone Swans of Amandale” by C.S.E. Cooney (Bone Swans, Mythic Delirium Books)
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
The Last Witness by K. J. Parker (Tor.com)
“Johnny Rev” by Rachel Pollack (F&SF, July/Aug 2015)
“Inhuman Garbage,” Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Asimov’s, March 2015)
“Gypsy,” Carter Scholz (F&SF, Nov/Dec 2015)
“The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn,” Usman Malik (Tor.com)
“What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear” by Bao Shu, translated by Ken Liu (F&SF, Mar/Apr 2015)

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016 will be published by Prime Books on August 2, 2016. It is 528 pages, priced at $19.95 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Julie Dillon.

…

Read More Read More