David W. Wixon on Editing The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak

David W. Wixon on Editing The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak

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I Am Crying All Inside-smallTwo months ago I was thrilled to announce the impending publication of the first six volumes of The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, edited by David W. Wixon, the Executor of the Literary Estate and a close friend of Simak’s. The lack of a complete collection of Simak’s short stories has been an aggravation to serious fans, so this massive project from Open Road Media — a comprehensive collection of all of Simak’s short stories, including his science fiction, fantasy, and westerns — was cause for celebration. Over the last few months there’s been a lot of excitement in the industry about the project, and Paul Di Filippo asked if “The Simak Renaissance was finally here.”

Wixon stopped by Black Gate yesterday, and he was gracious enough to answer some of the questions we posed in our first article, particularly on the digital pricing (the announced prices are a little wonky: $14.99 for volume 1, $7.99 for volumes 2 and 3, and $9.99 for volumes 4-6. As I said in the article, even $9.99 seems a little high for 8-10 stories/volume. ) Wixon commented:

I’m not sure of the policy behind Open Road’s pricing, but they assure me that they will deal with the issues you’ve raised.

On exactly how many volumes are in the series:

There will be 14 volumes of the complete Simak short fiction.

He also elaborated in more detail on how he selected and sorted the contents for each volume.

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Poetic Witchery and the Strangeness in Ordinary Things: Algernon Blackwood’s The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories

Poetic Witchery and the Strangeness in Ordinary Things: Algernon Blackwood’s The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories

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The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories Algernon Blackwood-smallOf the many things Algernon Blackwood did in his lifetime the most notable is producing a substantial body of horror and weird fiction. He tends to be overshadowed by some other writers of yesteryear, but one of the best known of those writers, H.P. Lovecraft, offered high praise for his abilities:

Of the quality of Mr. Blackwood’s genius there can be no dispute; for no one has even approached the skill, seriousness, and minute fidelity with which he records the overtones of strangeness in ordinary things and experiences, or the preternatural insight with which he builds up detail by detail the complete sensations and perceptions leading from reality into supernormal life or vision. Without notable command of the poetic witchery of mere words, he is the one absolute and unquestioned master of weird atmosphere; and can evoke what amounts almost to a story from a simple fragment of humourless psychological description. Above all others he understands how fully some sensitive minds dwell forever on the borderland of dream, and how relatively slight is the distinction betwixt those images formed from actual objects and those excited by the play of the imagination.

The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories was the first of Blackwood’s many story collections. It first saw publication in 1906. The edition reviewed here was published in 1916.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “The People of the Black Circle”

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “The People of the Black Circle”

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people-of-the-black-circleHoward Andrew Jones and Bill Ward kick off their re-read of The Bloody Crown of Conan by Robert E. Howard, the second of three omnibus volumes collecting the complete tales of Conan, with perhaps my favorite Conan tale, the 80-page novella “The People of the Black Circle.” It was originally published in three parts in the September, October and November 1934 issues of Weird Tales.

Bill: It’s easy to see why “The People of the Black Circle” is a Conan fan-favorite: plot-twists and action galore, great supporting characters, an exotic but plausibly constructed setting, and fabulous villains using a host of inventive magic. Conan is the adventurer and rogue we’ve come to know over the last dozen or so stories, this time commanding a tribe of Afghuli raiders on the borders of Vedhya, the Hyborian Age equivalent of India. There are a few elements in the story that may recall others in the Conan saga, but this time around there is nothing that feels recycled or borrowed, indeed the whole story feels fresh and something of a departure from what has come before.

Howard: It was a grand adventure and a very different feel from the last little parcel of tales. I’m glad REH decided to vary his theme, and I’m scratching my head wondering why this story didn’t serve more often as a sword-and-sorcery template. Probably because its unique character made it far more difficult to imitate.

Next up, Bill and Howard dive into the first Conan novel, The Hour of the Dragon. Stay tuned.

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New Treasures: The Shootout Solution by Michael R. Underwood

New Treasures: The Shootout Solution by Michael R. Underwood

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The Shootout Solution-smallMichael R. Underwood’s novel Shield and Crocus, set in a city built on the bones of a fallen giant and ruled by five criminal tyrants, had perhaps the most intriguing setting I came across last year. So I was delighted to see he was joining the stellar line-up at Tor.com with a new series, the Genrenauts. The first episode, The Shootout Solution, was published on November 17 as their tenth premium novella.

Leah Tang just died on stage.

Not literally.

Not yet.

Leah’s stand-up career isn’t going well. But she understands the power of fiction, and when she’s offered employment with the mysterious Genrenauts Foundation, she soon discovers that literally dying on stage is a hazard of the job!

Her first job takes her to a Western world. When a cowboy tale slips off its rails, and the outlaws start to win, it’s up to Leah — and the Genrenauts team — to nudge the story back on track and prevent major ripples on Earth.

But the story’s hero isn’t interested in winning, and the safety of Earth hangs in the balance…

See the complete list of Tor.com novellas we’ve covered so far below.

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The Medieval Medina of Tetouan, Morocco

The Medieval Medina of Tetouan, Morocco

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The narrow streets hide some lovely bits of old Islamic architecture. This is the door to the Saqia al-Fouqia Mosque, built 1608. The plastic sheeting got in the way of a lot of my photos, but it helped keep me dry.
The narrow streets hide some lovely bits of old Islamic architecture. This is the door to the Saqia al-Fouqia Mosque, built 1608. The plastic sheeting got in the way of a lot of my photos, but it helped keep me dry.

I’ve blogged previously here on Black Gate about spending some time living in Tangier, Morocco. The city is a good jumping off point to see northern Morocco, a region many visitors skip as they head down to Fez, the Atlas Mountains, and the southern casbahs. If they do that, they miss one of North Africa’s best preserved medinas, the 15th century marketplace of Tetouan, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Tetouan is located in the saddle of two clusters of hills. Home to about half a million people, it doesn’t attract many foreign tourists and offers a look at an traditional medina and its market that have not felt the hand of international shoppers.

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 187 Now Available

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 187 Now Available

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 187-smallIssue #187 of BCS has short fiction from Rich Larson and Jason S. Ridler, and an Audio Vault podcast (from issue #33) by Aliette de Bodard. It is cover-dated November 24.

“The Delusive Cartographer” by Rich Larson
Crane needed no further invitation. The pain in his back was forgotten now that he was finally here, finally close. He charted a foot over from the cell’s sliver window and down to the floor. He’d doubted, in the darkest hours of the night. He’d doubted the whole thing. But the groove was exactly where the cartographer had described it.

“Spider’s Ink” by Jason S. Ridler
To catch a bug, you must burn him out. That had been our experience with Macti spies and rebels. Under the authority of the Wayfaring House we came with black fire and warned all that if the Spider known as Heriz was not returned, we would decree the island corrupted and purify by shot and flame. It had worked in Jani, Uurun, and it would work here.

Audio Vault Podcast:
“In the Age of Iron and Ashes” by Aliette de Bodard

Rich Larson has been nominated for the Sturgeon Award, and his work has appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, F&SF, and many other places. Jason S. Ridler has published over sixty stories in such magazines as The Big Click, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Out of the Gutter.

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Vintage Treasures: Jinian Star-Eye by Sheri S. Tepper

Vintage Treasures: Jinian Star-Eye by Sheri S. Tepper

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Jinian Star Eye Tepper-small

Jinian Star-Eye was the last volume of Sheri S. Tepper’s monumental nine-volume fantasy opus, The True Game. On course, in keeping with 1980s-era fantasy marketing, no mention was made of this anywhere on the book. However, if you were an attentive buyer, you might have noticed the poem on the back, a sure tip that this was part of the series. Poetry as a marketing device, to the best of my knowledge, was an idea that was born and died with this series.

We’ve covered several of the previous installments over the years, but not the entire series. It began with King’s Blood Four in 1983, Tepper’s first novel. Subsequent volumes were divided into a trio of trilogies, starting with the True Game trilogy:

King’s Blood Four (1983)
Necromancer Nine (1983)
Wizard’s Eleven (1984)

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Future Treasures: X’s For Eyes by Laird Barron

Future Treasures: X’s For Eyes by Laird Barron

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X's For Eyes-back-small X's For Eyes-small

Laird Barron made quite a name for himself as a horror writer early in his career, but he’s really come into his own in the last few years. He was the guest editor of Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume One, and the subject of the highly acclaimed tribute anthology, The Children of Old Leech. James McGlothlin reviewed his recent work for us, calling his collection The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All “a great combination of cosmic horror… [and] gritty noir,” and The Light is the Darkness evidence that Barron has become “a superstar… in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft.”

His latest book, a slender novella from JournalStone, will be published this Friday. It features brothers MacBeth and Drederick, ages 14 and 12, wealthy sons of the superich Tooms family. Their father may be a supervillain, and it looks like the company’s newest space probe just accidentally contacted a malevolent alien god, but that won’t stop the lads from having a great summer vacation. Stu Horvath at Unwinnable says, “They’re like some kind of midnight reflection of the Hardy Boys or Johnny Quest and Hadji. If you ever thought The Venture Brothers needed more horror and less Star Wars references, then this is the book for you.”

X’s For Eyes is 98 pages, priced at $9.95 in trade paperback and $2.99 for the digital edition. Click the covers above for bigger versions.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in November

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in November

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CityWatch_GuardsCoverThe most popular article at Black Gate last month was M. Harold Page’s “An Adventurer’s Guide to the Middle Ages: Town Watch? Where?”, a look at the much-loved concept of a citizen’s militia in fantasy. It’s not hard to see why it was popular:

The first thing that Conan — or Locke Lamora, or Grey Mouser, or Vimes, or a D&D party  — would notice about a real medieval city would be the almost total absence of an Ankh Morpork-style town watch.

It’s a stock trope: here come a dozen Keystone Cops town watch in their funny armour, to arrest the drunken barbarian or catch the thief. Only it’s not like that in reality, or at least not quite like that in Later Medieval and Early Modern England, France, and Germany.

That’s not a criticism. Fantasy writers must write what they will. Dickensian thief takers are plausible, and raise themes to do with policing and justice. However, if, like me, you write Historical Adventure Fiction , then you need to know how policing worked because integrity, and because somebody else will know and will gleefully correct you in reviews. (It’s funny when your research is better than theirs though — and the one time I ever answered a review.)

Back in March, Thomas Parker’s asked our readers to “Tell Me Why,” demanding to know why fantasy fans embrace “ambitious, multivolume phone book series.” Sarah Avery’s long-gestating response, “Why Do We Do This To Ourselves? I Can Explain!”, the latest installment in her Series Series, clocked in at #2 for the month.

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