Black Gate – Page 743 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

October 2015 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

Friday, October 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

In his editorial this month, John Joseph Adams takes a few minutes to highlight a few of his accomplishments in the past month. It’s an impressive list.

In case you missed the news last month, we won another Hugo!… Lightspeed took home the rocket for Best Semiprozine, but also, just as exciting, there were two other Lightspeed Hugo victories: Thomas Olde Heuvelt’s story from Lightspeed, “The Day the World Turned Upside Down,” won the Hugo for Best Novelette, and one of our illustrators, Elizabeth Leggett, won the Hugo for Best Fan Artist. Congrats to them both, and thanks to everyone who voted for all of us… We won the Hugo for Best Semiprozine last year as well, but most of our team wasn’t able to be in London to accept the award in person (none of us except for our podcast producer, Stefan Rudnicki, were able to make it), so having all of us there in person this year made it extra special for us.

In related news, I also personally won an Alfie Award (for Best Editor, Short Form), a new, possibly one-off award presented by George R.R. Martin. It was created in response to controversy this year over the Hugo nominations… (They’re made out of vintage car hood ornaments, which closely resemble the original shape of the first Hugo Awards.)

This month is the debut of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, part of the prestigious Best American series. In it, guest editor Joe Hill and I present the top twenty stories of 2014 (ten science fiction, ten fantasy).

This month Lightspeed has original fantasy from Emil Ostrovski and Nike Sulway, and fantasy reprints by Kevin Brockmeier and Delia Sherman, and original SF by Maria Dahvana Headley and Adrian Tchaikovsky, plus SF reprints by An Owomoyela and Gregory Benford. All that plus their usual author spotlights, an interview with security expert and futurist Marc Goodman, and book and movie reviews. eBook readers get a bonus novella reprint of James Tiptree Jr.’s “Slow Music,” and a pair of novel excerpts.

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Hey! Let’s Not Get TOO Cozy

Friday, October 9, 2015 Violette Malan Comments 5 comments

Last time I wrote about cozy mysteries and whether we might have the equivalent subgenre in Fantasy or SF, and I got a couple of suggestions among the comments that intrigued me more than a little. Now obviously, our version of such a thing wouldn’t have the same conventions and elements as the cozy mystery – there likely wouldn’t be a murder, for one thing – and fellow BG blogger Sarah Avery reminded me of a cozy convention I’d forgotten, that the protagonist is never in any real danger. That doesn’t hold true for any subgenre of either Fantasy or SF, where every character is playing for keeps. As readers, we might feel sure that the main character(s) won’t die, but we often find that living has cost them a great deal.

So, are there Fantasy and SF equivalents to the cozy mystery?

One suggestion we batted around a little was the idea of the “intimate” Fantasy novel. This would be one in which the personal stakes might be very high, but in which the global stakes are minor, or don’t exist at all. This is less unusual for our genres then it used to be.

Just by chance the novel that reached the top of my to-be-read pile most recently was Jo Walton’s Tooth and Claw. I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to get to this one, but I’m now recommending it to anyone who holds still long enough – including you. Right from the start, as you can see from the cover art I’ve included, the novel has been compared to Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and in that manner, it’s certainly “intimate” in the sense that we’re talking about.

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New Treasures: Pathfinder Tales: Beyond the Pool of Stars by Howard Andrew Jones

Friday, October 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Here at the Chicago rooftop headquarters of Black Gate, one of the most anticipated books of the fall is Howard Andrew Jones’ third Pathfinder Tales novel, Beyond the Pool of Stars. It was finally released this week.

Beyond the Pool of Stars is a fantastical adventure of deep-water danger and unlikely alliances set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game. It follows Plague of Shadows and Stalking the Beast, but is a completely standalone adventure.

Mirian Raas comes from a long line of salvagers, adventurers who use magic to dive for sunken ships off the coast of tropical Sargava. When her father dies, Mirian has to take over his last job: a dangerous expedition into deep jungle pools, helping a tribe of lizardfolk reclaim the lost treasures of their people. Yet this isn’t any ordinary job, as the same colonial government that looks down on Mirian for her half-native heritage has an interest in the treasure, and the survival of the entire nation may depend on the outcome…

It also contains a free 12-page excerpt from Pathfinder Tales: Bloodhound by F. Wesley Schneider, on sale in December.

Pathfinder Tales: Beyond the Pool of Stars was published by Tor Books on October 6, 2015. It is 347 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Tyler Jacobson (see the complete wraparound art here). Read more at Howard’s website.

The October Fantasy Magazine Rack

Thursday, October 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

There are magazines for every taste on the rack in early October — with great fiction, comics, news, poetry, and lots more. The big news this month is the long-awaited return of Weirdbook, under the capable stewardship of editor Douglas Draa. Adrian Simmons also did a little investigative reporting on what really happened to that brilliant short story you submitted to your favorite fantasy magazine three months ago, in “Slushpile Blues,” Darrell Schweitzer took a look back at perhaps the most famous editor the genre has ever known in “John W. Campbell Jr. and the Knack for Being Wrong About Everything,” and Matthew Wuertz continued his issue-by-issue review of Galaxy magazine, with the December 1952 issue.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our mid-September 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 $12.95/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: Christmas at Beetlejuice’s House – Midnight Syndicate Does It Again

Thursday, October 8, 2015 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

As you are all likely aware by this point, I go all fan-girl when it comes to my goth-boy-band crush, Midnight Syndicate.

From way back when they were providing the soundtrack to the Playboy Mansion’s Halloween bashes to the music they produced for movies like The Dead Matter, I’ve hung on their every note; and no fantasy game night or Halloween season would be complete without them.

So when Ed Douglas contacted me to say Midnight Syndicate had recently completed something really special that would be right down my under-lit, cob-webby alley, I promptly began stalking the mail carrier until the package arrived.

And once again, the boys deliver – in a wonderfully different and unexpected way.

A Christmas album.

Yes, you read that right. Midnight Syndicate has just released Christmas: A Ghostly Gathering.

How, oh how to describe this to you? Let’s just say that if Beetlejuice invited you over to the Maitlands for a holiday Zagnut, he’d be playing this collection on all speakers.

Midnight Syndicate has taken your favorite holiday tunes and added in their unique mixture of dissident chords, eerie harmonics and original craftsmanship to deliver charmingly haunting fare that will take you from October straight through December.

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Vintage Treasures: Walkabout Woman by Michaela Roessner

Thursday, October 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Walkabout Woman Michaela Roessner-back-small

Fantasy shelves in the 80s groaned under the weight of Tolkien pastiches, Celtic fantasies, Thieves World anthologies, and a whole lot of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books. Books with more original settings, however, or which tapped into non-Western mythic traditions, were a lot harder to come by.

That’s part of what made Michaela Roessner’s debut novel Walkabout Woman so special. Set in the modern Australian outback, the novel offered fascinating glimpses of Aboriginal culture, paired with an intriguing story of a young Aboriginal girl pulled away from her home by a well-meaning missionary. The novel was a nominee for the Mythopoeic Award, and won the Crawford Award. Based almost solely on the strength of this novel, Roessner won the 1989 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Michaela Roessner was not a prolific writer, and she produced only three other books in her brief career: the SF novel Vanishing Point (1993), and two historical novels, The Stars Dispose (1997) and The Stars Compel (1999). Since 1999 she has concentrated mostly on short fiction. She’s produced roughly a dozen short stories in the last two decades; her most recent, “The Klepsydra: A Chapter from A Faunary of Recondite Beings,” appeared in the November 2011 issue of F&SF. Walkabout Woman was published in September 1988 by Bantam Spectra; it is 276 pages, priced at $3.95 in paperback. The wraparound cover is by Mark Harrison. It has never been reprinted, but Roessner did self-publish a digital version in July, 2011.

Celebrating the Arrival of Matthew David Surridge’s Reading Strange Matters: Collected Reviews, Vol I

Thursday, October 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Matthew David Surridge became a blogger here in June 2010, after his acclaimed story “The Word of Azrael” appeared in Black Gate 14. His very first post was “The Art of Storytelling and The Temple of Elemental Evil,” a look at how unpredictable stories spontaneously arise out of D&D sessions, using his own experience with Gary Gygax’s classic adventure as an example.

Since then he’s published 259 articles with us, and become one of our most respected and cherished writers. He was nominated for a Hugo Award this year (and his post declining the nomination, “A Detailed Explanation,” became the most-read article in Black Gate‘s history.)

Matthew’s blog posts are very different from what we normally do here. We cover a lot of ground at the site — keeping you up-to-date on the newest fantasy releases, reminding you of overlooked vintage paperbacks, informing you when magazines go on sale, and the like. By their nature, most of those articles are short and to-the-point. In contrast, Matthew’s pieces dive deep into carefully-selected subjects, exploring some of the best (and most overlooked) novels and writers in the field, and engaging them with depth and passion.

“I think I do good work,” one of his fellow bloggers confided in me years ago, “but Matthew raises blogging to a fine art.”

So I was delighted to see the release this week of the first collection of Matthew’s Black Gate columns, Reading Strange Matters: Collected Reviews, Vol I, from Grace & Victory Publications. It collects 23 of his best book reviews, plus one brand new piece, on Nalo Hopkinson’s Skin Folk.

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Future Treasures: King of Shards by Matthew Kressel

Thursday, October 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Matthew Kressel has had an impressive career over the past decade. He started publishing fiction in his own magazine, Sybil’s Garage, and quickly branched out to Electric Velocipede, Interzone, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. He received his first Nebula Nomination for “The Sounds of Old Earth” in 2013, and his second for “The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye” earlier this year. He has also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, for editing Sybil’s Garage.

King of Shards is his debut novel. It will be published by Arche Press, a quality small press who this year have also produced Marguerite Reed’s Archangel, and The End of the End of Everything by Dale Bailey. It is the first novel in The Worldmender Trilogy, and N.K. Jemisin called it “A surreal and exotic adventure in a unique mythological setting. Scary, exhilarating fun!” It follows Daniel Fisher, abducted on his wedding day by the demon king, Ashmedai, who been supplanted by the demon Mashit. Daniel and Ashmedai must work together to stop Mashit, before she destroys all of existence.

King of Shards will be published by Arche Press on October 13, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $17 in trade paperback. The striking cover is by Leon Tukker (click the image above for a bigger version). Read more at Matthew’s website.

Peter Tremayne’s Dracula Lives Trilogy Revisited

Thursday, October 8, 2015 William Patrick Maynard Comments 0 Comment

NOTE: The following article was first published on February 14, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 250 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

It has long been my contention that pulp fiction not discovered by age thirteen was beyond my ability to appreciate later in life. A certain amount of nostalgia seemed essential to enjoying such escapism once age and responsibility have got the better of you. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule in the rare instances where genuine literary talent is in evidence as is the case with the Holy Trinity of hardboiled detective fiction: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald. Given that I recently covered Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I decided to revisit Peter Tremayne’s three Dracula novels and one short story that I enjoyed so much as a teenager to see how they held up three decades on.

Peter Tremayne is best known today for his long-running Sister Fidelma mysteries. His medieval detective series is sort of a lightweight version of an Umberto Eco doorstop. Although Tremayne’s real world credentials are quite impressive as both an academic and scholar, his fiction is strictly populist in its appeal. Turn back the clock 40 years and one would find Peter Tremayne as a dedicated pulp pastiche writer trying his hand at extending the lifespan of H. Rider Haggard’s She, deliriously combining Shelley’s Frankenstein with Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, and delving deep into Stoker’s Dracula for a trilogy of loosely connected titles published by Bailey Brothers in the UK.

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The Search for Perry Rhodan 50

Wednesday, October 7, 2015 Doug Ellis Comments 4 comments

Back when I was a teenager in the 1970’s, I was a big fan of the Perry Rhodan series.

The English edition was published by Ace Books, and edited by Forry Ackerman. Forry offered subscriptions to the series, and I started subscribing as soon as I found out about the series.

The primary cover artist for the first 100+ issues was Gray Morrow. Morrow’s cover for #50, “Attack From the Unseen,” showed Perry posing heroically.

In 1976, Ace ran a survey in the back of issue #s 86-91, offering a free poster of the cover for #50 if you cut out the survey and returned it to Ace. I filled out my survey the day I got #86 in the mail, and sent it back immediately.

And then I waited. And waited. And waited. And no poster ever showed up. I’ve never seen one of these posters, have never heard of anyone who actually got one, and don’t think they were ever printed. My disappointment with Ace over this was deep.

Fast forward 28 years to the 62nd Worldcon, Noreascon 4, held in Boston. Prior to the convention, Deb and I visited our friend, Jerry Weist, and his wife Dana, who lived in the area. While going through stacks of art in Jerry’s flat files, I was astounded to find the original Gray Morrow painting for Perry Rhodan 50!

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