Black Gate – Page 747 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Announcing the Winners of Gestapo Mars

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Last week we invited Black Gate readers to win one of three copies of Victor Gischler’s brand new novel of interstellar Nazi mayhem, Gestapo Mars, by submitting a one-sentence review of their favorite Nazi science fiction story. As you can imagine, we received a wide range of entries, and today we announce our three winners. Winners were selected from the pool of eligible entries by the most reliable method known to modern science: D&D dice.

Our first winner is Dave Ritzlin, who submitted this concise gem:

The Little People by John Christopher sucks, but it has a whip-wielding Nazi leprechaun on the cover, so that’s my favorite NS SF story.

Can’t argue with that. Our next winner is Don Carpenter:

Lightning! by Dean Koontz is my favorite Nazi Science Fiction because you don’t find out they’re involved until the origin of the mystery man is revealed. (Trying to avoid spoilers)

We appreciate the lack of spoilers, Don. Finally, congratulations to Kevin Walters, for his comic-themed entry:

The Nazis of Hellboy (first story arc) and their scheme to combine science & sorcery to rule the world but resulted in bringing Hellboy to Earth.

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New Treasures: If Then by Matthew De Abaitua

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I spend a lot of talking talking to publicists, reading review copies, following blogs, and generally keeping up on the latest books and hot new writers in the genre. But to really stay informed, nothing beats a trip to a well-stocked bookstore. Case in point: Matthew De Abaitua’s latest novel If Then, which I discovered on the New Releases shelf on my Saturday trip to Barnes & Noble. The book description piqued my interest — and when I saw it was published by Angry Robot, that sealed the deal.

In the near future, after the collapse of society as we know it, one English town survives under the protection of the computer algorithms of the Process, which governs every aspect of their lives. The Process gives and it takes. It allocates jobs and resources, giving each person exactly what it has calculated they will need. But it also decides who stays under its protection, and who must be banished to the wilderness beyond. Human life has become totally algorithm-driven, and James, the town bailiff, is charged with making sure the Process’s suggestions are implemented.

But now the Process is making soldiers. It is readying for war — the First World War. Mysteriously, the Process is slowly recreating events that took place over a hundred years ago, and is recruiting the town’s men to fight in an artificial reconstruction of the Dardanelles campaign. James, too, must go fight. And he will discover that the Process has become vastly more sophisticated and terrifying than anyone had believed possible.

Matthew De Abaitua’s first novel, Red Men, was shortlisted for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

If Then was published by Angry Robot on September 1, 2015. It is 412 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Raid 71. Learn more at Angry Robot.

A Meditation on Writer’s Block

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 Aaron Starr Comments 1 comment

And the route was wide open just hours before

Lights-out had come two hours before, but I couldn’t sleep with the deadline looming. Rising from the squeaky metal cot, I left my cubicle and padded through the darkened corridors of the Black Gate writer’s bullpen. From all sides, the satisfied snores of my fellow writers echoed in the cavernous space just below the boiler rooms. Further up the narrow passage, I saw light spilling from one of the cubicles, and recognized with relief that it was the cell belonging to Ryan Harvey.

Creeping quickly along the narrow passages between the darkened cubes, pausing only to avoid the searchlights that raked the area from above, I ducked through the bead curtain that separated Ryan from his fellows. In the center of the cubicle, atop a small cushion on a richly woven rug, was the man himself. His eyes were nearly closed, his legs crossed, his fingertips gently touching, the very picture of serenity. At the faint rattle of the beads, his eyes opened fully.

“Mr. Harvey, sir?” I ventured.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said, gesturing to a nearby cushion.

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Future Treasures: The Last Witness by K. J. Parker

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

Bestselling fantasy author K.J. Parker, author of The Scavenger trilogy and The Engineer trilogy, disclosed that he’s actually famed British novelist Tom Holt on the Coode Street Podcast on April 22. It was a revelation that stunned many (me included), as over the last 17 years Holt has continued his prolific output under his own name, while simultaneously writing over a dozen novels as K.J. Parker. That’s an impressive accomplishment. Parker’s latest release is the fifth book in Tor.com‘s new line of premium novellas. The Last Witness is a classic Parker tale, with a strong supporting cast of princes, courtiers, merchants, academics, and generally unsavory people.

When you need a memory to be wiped, call me.

Transferring unwanted memories to my own mind is the only form of magic I’ve ever mastered. But now, I’m holding so many memories I’m not always sure which ones are actually mine, any more. Some of them are sensitive; all of them are private. And there are those who are willing to kill to access the secrets I’m trying to bury…

Check out all ten Tor.com fall novellas (including sample chapters!) here.

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It Is A Busy Omniverse: The Sword of Shadows: The Voidal Vol. 3 by Adrian Cole

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 8 comments

Tyrandire, the Palace of Pain, moves secretly and silently through unseen tunnels between the many dimensions of the omniverse, traversing any of them that its grim master wishes to visit. A minute moon, perfectly circular, colder than terror, Tyrandire speeds on its way like light, sometimes lingering like a biting frost. The energy that charges this oval missile is greater than that of any sun, indeed greater than the energy contained within an entire universe, for it is the will of the outlaw god, Ubeggi the Deceitful. Where Ubeggi seeks to go, his Palace of Pain takes him. He has many missions, all of them selfish, all of them corrupt, for the Weaver of Wars exists solely for his own amusement and he delights in knotting together the workings of more thoughful gods or undoing their orderly tapestries of fate. All the gods know of Ubeggi, and when his Palace of Pain nears their own haunts in the omniverse, they curse him, knowing that his mischief will be upon them.

from Part One: The Weaver of Wars

And so, with The Sword of Shadows, we come to the end of the Voidal’s saga. For a series I have already called favorably “a study in sensory overload,” and “excessive, over the top, and incredibly phatasmagorical,” author Adrian Cole ends things as madly and wildly as a reader could hope.

Three of its eight chapters, were published previously as short stories: “The Weaver of Wars,” “At the Council of Gossipers,” and “Dark Destroyer.” Unlike the two previous books, this one reads more like a coherent novel than as a fix-up.

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Dracula: The Definitive Edition

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 William Patrick Maynard Comments 1 comment

NOTE: The following article was first published on January 17, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these first 20 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.

Dracula by Bram Stoker is the subject of my very first article as a blogger. I follow several book review blogs, but had mixed feelings about starting my own. Blogs serve no useful purpose save providing a few minutes of distraction from the mundane. As a result, they are fairly inconsequential in the Grand Scheme of Life, but infinitely more useful than a politician.

Dracula is slowly gaining acceptance in literary circles as more than just a genre classic and deservedly so. Of course, mass acceptance for a novel that has never been out of print in its 118 years on the planet means that there are literally hundreds of public domain copies to choose from for the unwary consumer. The focus of this review is on Dracula: The Definitive Edition available from Fall River Press. This edition is recommended not only for Edward Gorey’s fine illustrations and Marvin Kaye’s impressive essays and notes on the text, but it is also affordably priced.

This gets my nod over the many annotated editions out there for the simple fact that Mr. Kaye gives the modern reader all they need to know to enjoy the novel in the context it was written without getting bogged down endlessly in railway timetables and notes on Transylvanian culture, cuisine, superstition, or topography. Nor does he become sidetracked in speculation on Stoker’s marriage, sex life, or physical and mental health. Mr. Kaye provides the salient biographical details and expounds on details that are relevant to better appreciating the text and nothing more. His essays are a model of efficiency and stand on the strength of their factual accuracy above the more verbose and salacious theories one comes to expect with literary classics.

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Adventures in Spellcraft: Rope Trick

Monday, September 28, 2015 markrigney Comments 13 comments

Calling all old-school gamers, the folks who cut their teeth on the Players Handbook, the Monster Manual, or even those long-lost oddities like Eldritch Wizardry and Greyhawk. For those of us still standing, which I do hope is the majority, I’d like to take a quick stroll down Memory Lane.

Don’t worry, it’s only a block or so away, just past Green Town, Illinois, and not so far from my last (highly opinionated) write-up on the ill-behaved sorcery known as Chain Lightning.

Great. Now that we’re walking, let me ask, do you remember that clever little escape hatch spell, Rope Trick? Very handy for “taking five” in the midst of a battle not otherwise going well. Very useful for getting undisturbed shut-eye while camped overnight in hostile territory. Very helpful when the goal of your particular role-playing adventure is to drive the GM bats.

The basics, for those who may not recall, is that the casting of a Rope Trick causes a length of rope to suspend itself vertically in mid-air. Anyone shinnying up the rope will disappear, arriving in a pocket of extra-planar space. The Players Handbook phrased it this way:

The upper end is in fact fastened in an extra-dimensional space, and the spell caster up to five others can climb up the rope and disappear into this place of safety where no creature can find them.

(I’m on page seventy-one, second level magic user spells, for those of you following along on the app.)

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Peril on the Purple Planet

Monday, September 28, 2015 Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones Comments 1 comment

With NASA announcing astonishing news about the red planet, I thought it high time to talk about the purple planet, and the perils therein.

Maybe YOU were clued in, but despite a widely advertised Kickstarter campaign the impending release – nay, even the existence – of the purple planet completely passed me by until I swung by tenfootpole.org and read an enthusiastic review of a splendid sword-and-planet setting. I determined then and there to lay my hands on the product and learn about those perils myself.

My verdict? If you love sword-and-planet you need it. Even if Dungeon Crawl Classics isn’t your role-playing system of choice, you need it. Hell, you might even need if if you like sword-and-planet and don’t intend to game, because it’s just a blast. And I can highly recommend getting the boxed set. In his own review at tenfootpole, Bruce Lynch laments that it could be even cooler if there are more locations, because he read only the basic adventure. Voila, there ARE, within the set.

For once, the hype on the back cover copy delivers on all that it promises. If this sounds good to you, go ye forth and buy it: “The Purple Planet: Where Tribes of man-beasts wage an endless war beneath a dying sun. Where might death orms rule the wastes, befouled winds whistle through ancient crypts, and forests of fungi flourish in the weirdling light. Where ancient technologies offer life… or a quick death.” If that doesn’t sound interesting, I won’t bother trying to convince you to look within.

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Vintage Treasures: The Sword and the Satchel by Elizabeth Boyer

Monday, September 28, 2015 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Elizabeth Boyer’s first novel, The Sword and the Satchel, launched her on a successful career as a fantasy author in the 80s and early 90s. Rather uniquely at the time, she drew heavily from Norse mythology, and the setting of every one of her novels is the Scandinavia of Norse myth — packed with deadly frost giants, sinister dark elves, quarrelsome trolls, mist-shrouded burial mounds, wizards, sorcerers, and dwarves. Her first series, World of Alfar, began with The Sword and the Satchel and continued in three additional volumes:

The Elves and the Otterskin (1981)
The Thrall and the Dragon’s Heart (1982)
The Wizard and the Warlord (1983)

Her other books include the four volume Wizard’s War series, The Clan of the Warlord (1992), and her final novel, Keeper of Cats (1995).

The Sword and the Satchel was published as a paperback original by Del Rey in May 1980. It is 312 pages, priced at $2.25. The cover is by Robert Florczak.

Apex Magazine #76 Now on Sale

Monday, September 28, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

In his editorial this month, Jason Sizemore celebrates the rich world of international SF.

I offer my customary welcome with a bit more glee than usual. This is a special month for Apex Magazine as we spotlight one of my favorite things: international SF. To make this happen, I turned to Cristina Jurado, a Spanish author and editor-in-chief of SuperSonic, the first bi-lingual semiprozine for the English and Spanish speaking markets. She did a wonderful job selecting the original fiction this month.

When Lavie Tidhar and I did the first volume of The Apex Book of World SF in 2009, few Anglo readers could name more than a handful of non-Anglo (specifically the United States, Canada, Australia, and Great Britain) genre authors. On the eve of the release of The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 4, it pleases me to report that the scope of the genre has broadened substantially in the last six years. Perhaps the most buzzed about science fiction novel of the year is Chinese writer Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem. The world owes Ken Liu a debt of gratitude for bringing Liu’s work to English readers.

This issue of Apex also includes a new story from Liu Cixin, “Mountain.”

Here’s the complete TOC.

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