November 2015 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

November 2015 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

Comments 0 Comment

Lightspeed Magazine November 2015-smallEditor John Joseph Adams shares some good news in his editorial this month.

Back in August, it was announced that both Lightspeed and our Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue specifically had been nominated for the British Fantasy Award. (Lightspeed was nominated in the Periodicals category, while WDSF was nominated in the Anthology category.) The awards were presented October 25 at FantasyCon 2015 in Nottingham, UK, and, alas, Lightspeed did not win in the Periodicals category. But WDSF did win for Best Anthology! Huge congrats to Christie Yant and the rest of the WDSF team, and thanks to everyone who voted for, supported, or helped create WDSF! You can find the full list of winners at britishfantasysociety.org. And, of course, if you somehow missed out on WDSF, you can learn more about that, including where to buy it, at destroysf.com.

This month Lightspeed has original fantasy from Helena Bell and Kenneth Schneyer, and fantasy reprints by Toh EnJoe and Karen Joy Fowler, and original SF by Rahul Kanakia and Caroline M. Yoachim, plus SF reprints by Brian Stableford and Kameron Hurley. All that plus their usual author spotlights, an interview with Ernest Cline, and book and movie reviews. eBook readers get a bonus reprint of Elizabeth Hand’s novella “The Least Trumps,” and an excerpt from Mira Grant’s novel Chimera.

Here’s the complete fiction contents for the November issue.

…

Read More Read More

Lost Stone Cities and Desolate Outposts: Exploring Runebound – The Mists of Zanaga

Lost Stone Cities and Desolate Outposts: Exploring Runebound – The Mists of Zanaga

Comments 11 comments

Zanaga_BoxI previously wrote about Runebound (2nd Edition), an RPG-like board game from Fantasy Flight. You might want to give it a quick read to get the basics down. I also did a post on The Sands of Al-Kalim expansion. Next up is a look at another of the big box expansions: The Mists of Zanaga.

Mists is another of the ‘big box’ expansions for Runebound. It comes with a board that you lay over most of the original Runebound board, completely changing the terrain.

Runebound is a traditional Middle-Earth type of fantasy world, while The Sands of Al-Kalim was a desert setting. Mists of Zanaga is the classic jungle environment, with lost stone cities and desolate outposts in the wild.

The idea is that some powerful entity known as Tarakhe sleeps deep beneath Zangara. It is a primal force that corrupts the world and drove the lizardmen to abandon their empire and descend into barbarism.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Solar Express by L.E. Modesitt

New Treasures: Solar Express by L.E. Modesitt

Comments 0 Comment

Solar Express Modesitt-smallWe don’t cover much hard science fiction at Black Gate. But we do cover our share of adventure SF… especially if it’s from writers we like, and if we hear good things about it.

Both of those things apply to L.E. Modesitt’s new novel Solar Express. I first heard about it from Arin Komins at Starfarer’s Despatch, who has excellent taste, and who tells us she’s “Really really loving the new Modesitt book, Solar Express. Very hard sf, near future. … And utterly wonderful commentary on politics.” So I got my hands on a copy, and I’m very much looking forward to relaxing with it this weekend.

You can’t militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth’s surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation.

The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun. Now there is a race between countries to see who can study and control the artifact dubbed the “Solar Express” before it perhaps destroys itself.

Leading the way for the North American Union is Alayna’s friend, Captain Christopher Tavoian, one of the first shuttle pilots to be trained for combat in space. But, as the alien craft gets closer to its destination, it begins to alter the surface of the sun in strange new ways, ways that could lead Alayna to revolutionary discoveries-provided Chris can prevent war from breaking out as he navigates among the escalating tensions between nations.

Solar Express was published by Tor Books on November 3, 2015. It is 448 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover, and $14.99 for the digital edition.

Announcing the Winners of Danie Ware’s Ecko Endgame from Titan Books

Announcing the Winners of Danie Ware’s Ecko Endgame from Titan Books

Comments 0 Comment

Ecko Endgame-small

Break out the party hats! We have three winners!

Last week we invited you to enter a contest to win one of three copies of Ecko Endgame, the latest book in one of the most talked-about series on the market, which James Lovegrove calls “The Matrix meets Game of Thrones.” To enter, all you had to do was send us an e-mail with the subject “Ecko Endgame.” As you can imagine, we were swamped with entries, so this turned into one of our shorter contests. Three winners were selected from the pool of eligible entries by the most reliable method known to modern science: D&D dice. The winners are:

Alan Phillips
Pamela Crowley-Evans
Jeff Zahnen

Congratulations all! Once again, we’d like to thank Titan Books for providing the prizes and making the contest possible. If you entered and didn’t win, our condolences — but there’s still time to enter to win Julie Czerneda’s brand new hardcover This Gulf of Time and Stars!

Ecko Endgame was published by Titan Books on November 10, 2015. It is 528 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback, and $3.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Amazing15.

Future Treasures: Daughter of Blood, Book 3 of The Wall of Night, by Helen Lowe

Future Treasures: Daughter of Blood, Book 3 of The Wall of Night, by Helen Lowe

Comments 0 Comment
The Heir of Night-small The Gathering of the Lost-small Daughter of Blood-small

Helen Lowe’s The Wall of Night has been getting some good press. The opening volume won the Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Debut, and the second was nominated for the 2013 David Gemmell Legend Award. At my old stomping grounds SF Site, Katherine Petersen kicked off her review of the second volume as follows:

Helen Lowe’s Wall of Night series has the potential to become a classic, right up there with the likes of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. The Gathering of the Lost is the second of this four-book series and takes us deeper into the world of Haarth where the first book, The Heir of Night, mostly introduced us to Malian, heir to the House of Night and her friend and ally Kalan, both of the Derai. The nine houses of the Derai garrison a large, rugged mountain range that gives the series its title. But after the Keep of Winds where Malian grew up was breached five years ago by long-time Derai enemies, the Darkswarm, it’s the whole land of Haarth, not just the Derai in jeopardy…

Lowe has a lyrical prose style that often seems more like poetry. Sometimes it seems writers try too hard to evoke their characters or surroundings, but for Lowe it seems effortless.

…

Read More Read More

Go Big Or Go Home?

Go Big Or Go Home?

Comments 11 comments

Wolfe Long sunIn my last couple of posts (a while ago now) I was looking at small-scale storytelling, first talking about the cozy mystery, and then about whether the “intimate” form of fantasy novel might be that subgenre’s equivalent. I don’t think there’d be much of a disagreement, however, if I suggest that Fantasy and SF are better known – particularly by the general public – for their larger-scale (dare I say epic?) narratives.

And speaking of epics, aren’t there really two main subgenres of large-scale narratives in Fantasy and SF? The epic, and the military? With the former most closely associated with Fantasy, and the latter with SF.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: A Final Report of the Commercial Starship Nostromo, or The Alien Saga Continues…

Goth Chick News: A Final Report of the Commercial Starship Nostromo, or The Alien Saga Continues…

Comments 10 comments

Alien Covenant poster-smallNormally, I have a personal rule against covering the same topic twice in so many weeks. Primarily this is because I have an extremely short attention span and I assume you do as well.

But I just couldn’t let this go.

Last week we joined together to lament the assumed loss of a true Aliens sequel directed by Neill Blomkamp and ignoring the mediocre efforts that were Alien 3 and Alien 4. We also shook our collective fists as the mercurial Ridley Scott who, after foisting Prometheus upon us, originally threatened to continue the torture with Prometheus 2, but instead took a hard left turn and commandeered the Aliens sequel by turning it into connective tissue between the Prometheus and Alien storylines.

We knew this from reading cryptic Ridley Scott quotes during which he referenced if not clarified his new project entitled Alien: Paradise Lost.

However, no sooner had we begun to get our brains around this when last Friday the newswire was abuzz with fresh Scott quotations, stemming from his Thursday evening appearance and the AFI Festival (American Film Institute).

According to IndieWire, Scott remarked that the project formerly known as Alien: Paradise Lost will now be called Alien: Covenant.

But buckle up, because there’s more.

…

Read More Read More

The Elusive Film Footage of the Very First Worldcon

The Elusive Film Footage of the Very First Worldcon

Comments 5 comments

Photo From First Worldcon-small

Here’s a photo from the first Worldcon, taken by Bill Dellenback. In this one, Jack Darrow is signing something, while P. Schuyler Miller (holding a pipe), looks on. Forrest Ackerman — or 4SJ — looks a little bored. I think the guy standing to Darrow’s right, in the foreground, is his good friend Otto Binder, but I’m not certain on that.

I acquired this photo many years ago, along with a whole batch of other material, from the estate of Jack Darrow. In the 1930’s, Darrow was pretty much fan #2 behind Ackerman. Among the material in Darrow’s estate were a number of photos that had been taken by Bill Dellenback (later staff photographer for the Kinsey Institute) at the first World Con in NY in 1939, which both Darrow and Dellenback attended.

I have a carbon copy of a letter dated August 16, 1939 that Darrow wrote to his friend, Walt Dennis, concerning the first Worldcon. In part, it reads as follows.

…

Read More Read More

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 186 Now Available

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 186 Now Available

Comments 0 Comment

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 186-smallAccording to several reliable sources (and even some photographs), BCS editor Scott H. Andrews was at the World Fantasy Convention two weeks ago. I know most of the editors in the field, but I’ve never met Scott, and that’s an oversight I’d like to correct some day. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make the con this year. Ah well! Next year for sure.

Issue #186 has short fiction from Bruce McAllister and Tamara Vardomskaya, and a podcast by Cory Skerry. It is cover-dated November 12.

“Holy Water, Holy Blood” by Bruce McAllister
He was comparing me, a peasant boy, to himself, a pope, but this did not feel strange. He wanted us to be friends — that I could tell — so why not make of us equals?

“The Guardian’s Head “by Tamara Vardomskaya
This bridge, I knew, was itself a sign of the empress’s faith in us. A permanent bridge expected the water to yield and hold back.

Audio Fiction Podcast:
“Bloodless” by Cory Skerry
But she wouldn’t let him make it through the gate; the inside guards were there to deal with travelers. Kamalija was here to deal with monsters.

Bruce McAllister has been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and Shirley Jackson Awards. Tamara Vardomskaya is a Canadian writer who has previously appeared at Tor.com. Cory Skerry’s last story for Beneath Ceaseless Skies was “Sinking Among Lilies” (Issue #92).

…

Read More Read More