Black Gate – Page 710 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Interzone #261 Now on Sale

Saturday, December 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The November-December issue of Britain’s longest running science fiction and fantasy magazine is now on sale. The cover, “Sleepy Hollow,” is by Martin Hanford (click the image at right for a bigger version.) This issue offers some fascinating ideas. Here’s Lois Tilton at Locus Online on Malcolm Devlin’s “Five Conversations with My Daughter (Who Travels in Time).”

One night, after yet another fight with his wife, Dad’s six-year-old daughter comes to join him on the sofa and begins to speak in the voice of an adult woman. It seems that from time to time her future self can rejoin herself as a child, in moments when two points converge — whatever that means. She’s come now to ask a favor, later… He does, of course, promise, and as the years pass he comes more and more to believe her. But the favor she asks, when the time comes, isn’t what he would have chosen.

And on Rich Larson’s “We Might Be Sims”

The three disposable convicts on an experimental trip to Europa [“We’re cheap enough already,” Mack says. “We’re a tin can full of human detritus.”] have long since gone stir-crazy, each in different ways. Jasper has decided it’s all a simulation, that they’re really locked in a bunker somewhere on Earth. He wants to open the hatch, to prove it.

Read Lois’ complete comments on the issue here.

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New Treasures: The Redemption’s Heir Series by Anne M. Pillsworth

Saturday, December 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Here’s something interesting: a two-volume Young Adult series of Lovecraftian horror and mystery. I don’t often see YA fiction labeled “Lovecraftian,” but when I do, I pay attention.

The first volume, Summoned, was published in hardcover in June of last year, and just released in paperback by Tor in October. It’s the tale of a teenage boy in Arkham, who finds an ancient book in a rare book store… with an ad from a sorcerer seeking an apprentice, and an e-mail address. When he replies, the boy finds himself quickly drawn into strange secrets from Arkham’s history. And parts of Arkham’s history are very dark indeed.

The standalone sequel picks up the tale as Sean is offered a chance to study real magic, with a proper teacher. Fathomless arrived in hardcover from Tor in later October.

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Mysterion Submissions

Friday, December 18, 2015 Donald Crankshaw Comments 0 Comment

I’ve discussed Mysterion: Rediscovering the Mysteries of the Christian Faith, the anthology my wife and I are editing and publishing, on Black Gate before (here and here). We’re nearing the end of our submissions period, so I thought I’d discuss some of what’s going on with us. There’s a week left until submissions close on December 25th, so there’s still time to submit if you’d like to.

I’ve been keeping track of submissions on a weekly basis. As of Wednesday, we’ve received 385 submissions since we opened on October 15th, of which we’ve responded to 315. Most of those were rejections, but we’re currently holding 39 stories that we’re interested in publishing.

We won’t select any stories to go into the anthology until we’ve read them all. Instead, when we read a story that we think would make a good addition to the anthology, we tell the author that we’re planning to hold their story. After we’ve finished, I expect we’ll have somewhere around 50 stories that we’re holding. From those we’ll select the the ones that will go into the anthology.

At this rate, it looks pretty certain that we’ll pass 400 submissions overall. It’s even possible that we’ll pass 500, if we get a surge in the last week equal to what we got in the first week, but I think we’ll probably end up somewhere between 425-450.

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The Ultimate Holiday Shopping Guide for the Conquerors in Your Life

Friday, December 18, 2015 mariebilodeau Comments 2 comments

Holiday shopping is always tricky, especially for those ambitious, high-reaching and quick-to-draw-their-sword-and-slay-you-with-their-displeasure conquering types. We all have one or two in our lives!

A snake pit is that gift that keeps on giving. And taking.

Take some stress out of the season’s fun blood baths with our handy holiday gift guide!

For the New Conqueror

It’s the holidays for everyone, and new conquerors needs to distress while growing their frightful reputations. Get them a small village of poorly armed insurgents to slay. The easy win will foster troop moral and people will fear their ire. A win-win for everyone involved! Remember: unnamed troops need some holiday cheer, too!

For the Conqueror That Has Everything

They already have a harem, a snake pit and a fire-breathing dragon. What to get them? A seasonal gift could take the simple form of fresh heads for their Field of Warning. Gathering fresh heads constantly can be quite demanding for troops, and they’ll thank you for that brief, thoughtful respite during this holiday season. Sometimes, when shopping for someone who tirelessly slaughters so many, it’s nice to give them a break in some nice pre-packaged, still fleshy heads. Don’t forget about the environment – source local, homegrown heads to spare on shipping and preservation costs! Future generations will thank you.

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Future Treasures: The Alchemy of Chaos by Marshall Ryan Maresca

Friday, December 18, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Marshall Ryan Maresca’s debut novel, The Thorn of Dentonhill, followed the adventures of Veranix Calbert, diligent college student by day and crime-fighting vigilante by night, in the crime-ridden districts of the port city of Maradaine. Library Journal said, “Veranix is Batman, if Batman were a teenager and magically talented,” and that’s not far off. Now comes word that the seqel, The Alchemy of Chaos, arrives from DAW in February, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

Veranix Calbert is The Thorn — the street vigilante who became a legend to the people of Maradaine, especially the gangs that run the neighborhood of Aventil. The Thorn continues to harass Willem Fenmere, the drug kingpin of the Dentonhill neighborhood. Veranix is still determined to stop Fenmere and the effitte drug trade, especially when he discovers that Fenmere is planning on using the Red Rabbits gang to bring the drug into Aventil.

But it’s also Exam Week at the University of Maradaine, where Veranix is a magic student. With his academic career — and future as a mage — riding on his performance, Veranix needs to devote himself entirely to studying and participating in a fellow student’s thesis experiments. There’s no time to go after Fenmere or the Red Rabbits.

Then a series of strange pranks begin to plague the campus, using a form of magic that Veranix doesn’t recognize. As the pranks grow increasingly deadly, it becomes clear that there’s someone with a vendetta against the university, and The Thorn may be the only one capable of stopping them. Between the prankster, the war brewing between the Aventil gangs, and the flamboyant assassins Fenmere has hired to kill him, Veranix may end up dead before the week is out. Which just might be preferable to taking his exams….

Maresca’s second novel, A Murder of Mages, began a second series set in Maradaine. The sequel, An Import if Intrigue, the second novel of The Maradaine Constabulary, is coming Fall 2016.

The Alchemy of Chaos, the second volume of The Maradaine Series, will be published by DAW on February 2, 2016. It is 400 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the print and digital versions. The cover is by Paul Young.

The Halt And The Lame

Friday, December 18, 2015 Violette Malan Comments 0 Comment

One of the details that made Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers so unusual at the time of its filming (1973) was a level of realism previously unseen in the historical adventure movie, (think Errol Flynn’s The Adventures of Robin Hood). Lester showed us illness, filth, and poverty in ways we hadn’t really seen in a movie that wasn’t about illness, filth, or poverty.

Aside: Oddly enough, there’s more realism of this kind in comedy than in any other genre, as though it’s okay to present disease and disfigurement in a way that make us laugh. (Disclaimer: the psychological basis of laughter is not the focus of this post)

Blade Runner did a similar kind of thing for SF movies. Maybe it wasn’t the first time we’d been shown a dark future, but it certainly was the first time we’d been shown one that wasn’t clean. We may argue that George Lucas did it first, in the original Star Wars movie, where Luke was driving what was obviously a used flying car. (And that’s my Star Wars reference for today.)

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The Robot’s Voice Goes Silent

Friday, December 18, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

It hasn’t been a good month to be a genre media site.

Less than a month after io9 announced it would be absorbed by Gizmodo, pop-media site The Robot’s Voice (formerly Topless Robot) abruptly announced late yesterday that was shuttering its doors. In his goodbye message, “So Long, and Thanks For All the WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS,” editor Luke Y. Thompson wrote:

I’ve given this site formerly known as Topless Robot three years of my life and hard work, and I wouldn’t trade them. I hoped that covering the subjects and culture that I love would sustain the site. For three years, it has — the three years it took to make The Force Awakens, no less. But all things must end. Today is the The Robot’s Voice’s final day of publication. After years of trying, we couldn’t make this work financially…

To my competition in the nerd-blogging world: I was mostly a one-man show, and I managed to go toe-to-toe with all of you for three years. That’s not too bad, right?

I don’t know where I’ll land next. I own a couple of URLs that I might use to start a project of my own, and no doubt somebody can put me to work writing about movies somewhere.

Topless Robot was founded in 2008 by Rob Bricken and Bill Jensen, and was renamed The Robot’s Voice in September 2015 in an attempt to become more mainstream. It is owned by Village Voice Media, the holding company that once owned The Village Voice. Read Thompson’s goodbye message here.

Goth Chick News: Universal Studios Goes Back to Its Roots and I Should Be Excited, But…

Thursday, December 17, 2015 Sue Granquist Comments 7 comments

Sofia Boutella as the Mummy of Cleopatra, perhaps?

This is the sort of news that should actually make me smile… a bit.

Instead, I’m pouring myself an adult beverage and doodling the word “why” all over the back of my 2015 Edward Gory calendar.

Before I explain cause of all the sadness, let’s peer into the black depths of Hollywood history…

As a fledgling movie studio in the early 1920’s Universal began to gain real public attention with its first two horror films The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and Phantom of the Opera (1925).

But it wasn’t until 1928, when studio founder Carl Laemmle made his son, Carl Jr. head of Universal Pictures as a 21st birthday present, that the studio found what became its most popular genre. Carl Jr. took his childhood taste for the “penny dreadfuls,” mixed it with Daddy’s money and created a niche for the studio, beginning a series of horror films which extended into the 1950s, affectionately dubbed Universal Horror.

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Vintage Treasures: The Good Stuff by Gardner Dozois

Thursday, December 17, 2015 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Gardner Dozois is one of the most accomplished and prolific editors in our field. He’s produced scores of anthologies, including 31 volumes of The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor 15 times in 17 years from 1988 to 2004, as editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction.

In addition to championing countless new writers (as well as older and more neglected writers), he’s shown a lot of love for adventure SF and space opera over the years, which he calls “center-core SF.” In 1998 and 1999 he released two anthologies with the subtitle Adventure SF in the Grand Tradition, both with St. Martin’s/Griffin. They are probably my favorite of his numerous books:

The Good Old Stuff (434 pages, $17.95 in trade paperback, December 1998; cover by Ed Emshwiller)
The Good New Stuff (450 pages, $16.95 in trade paperback, February 1999; cover by Bob Eggleton)

The first volume collects fiction from 1948-1971, and the second from 1977-1998. Together they constitute the finest survey of adventure SF our field has seen.

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December GigaNotoSaurus Features “Quarter Days” by Iona Sharma

Thursday, December 17, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

One of my frequent complaints about the current crop of genre magazines is that they don’t publish enough novella-length fiction. As page counts shrink and more magazines announce they’ll only consider fiction below 8,000 words, the market for novellas — generally any fiction between 17,500 words and novel length — has dramatically shrunk.

But what if there was a market that published only SF and fantasy novelettes and novellas? That would be totally fabulous, right?

Well, there is such a market, and as a matter of fact, it is fabulous. GigaNotoSaurus, edited by Rashida J. Smith and published since November 2010, is a free online magazine that offers readers one story, between 5,000 and 25,000 words, every month. It has published multiple Nebula-nominated works, including Ken Liu’s “All the Flavors” and Ferrett Steinmetz’s “Sauerkraut Station,” as well as Judith Tarr’s “Dragon Winter,” S. Hutson Blount’s “The Taking of Book 257,” and C.S.E. Cooney’s marvelous “How the Milkmaid Struck a Bargain With the Crooked One.”

This month’s story is Iona Sharma’s “Quarter Days,” which Stompydragons called “utterly delightful. I loved the world she’s built, her characters felt fresh, and the plot used all of that to great effect.” Read it free here.