Black Gate – Page 750 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

August Short Story Roundup

Tuesday, September 22, 2015 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 1 comment

Though I spent much of August traveling, sipping drinks in distant lands (South Carolina), and taking a break from swords & sorcery, I still found time for my monthly dose of short fiction. Over the years I’ve really come to feel that it’s my obligation to get the word out to the S&S reading population about what’s going on in the land of short stories (and the occasional novella).

Swords and Sorcery Magazine #43 presented a strong issue this past month. Its two tales are by authors unknown to me, but for whom I will keep an eye open in the future.

The first, “Stragglers in the Cold,” is by Connor Perry. Theor Stormcrow is a skinchanger, refugee from the last survivors of a lost cause, and is dying of starvation. Stormcrow and his kind do not actually change into different creatures, but instead send their minds into them. Now, near death and fearing it, he has decided to commit the gravest crime of his kind: to steal the body of another skinchanger.

In a mere 3,000 words, Perry creates a complex and violent universe. As in the better S&S short fiction, “Stragglers” alludes to events outside the narrow confines of its first and last paragraphs, giving context to its characters and building atmosphere. In this case the context is a lost war, and the atmosphere is one of desperation.

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Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Q25 Now Available

Tuesday, September 22, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, one of the most reliable sources of new adventure fantasy, arrives right in time with their 25th quarterly issue. This one contains short stories by Michael Liguori, Linda Donahue, and N.G. Lancaster, plus a special surprise from editor Adrian Simmons.

“Beast Hunter’s Song,” by Michael Liguori
In a land where terrible creatures once terrorized the landscape an aging hunter gets one more chance to face a one of a kind beast.

“White Elephants,” by Linda Donahue
Escorting the Indian bride of the Shah of Persia is a task fraught with danger. Bandits! A disagreeable elephant! But when a passing Roc decides the elephant would make a fine meal, Darius, chosen treasure guard, has to take some big risks to get it all back.

“Engines Rarely Seen,” by N.G. Lancaster
In the breath before the armies move out again, a vendetta brings a group of vagabond mercenaries into the docks outside of town.

“Ram Daskanyarda,” by Adrian Simmons About a year ago, HFQ editor Adrian Simmons got the idea of updating/re-booting/re-imagining the H.P. Lovecraft classic “Nyarlathotep” for our modern, troubled, age. Turns out, from a marketing standpoint, this was a poor investment of time. However! Although it isn’t quite S&S fiction, he considered posting the story here at HFQ, but thought better of it when he realized that he could have the re-animated corpse of H.P. himself take time off from dispensing advice on the internet to read it aloud!

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New Treasures: Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

Monday, September 21, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Nnedi Okorafor’s first novel for adults, Who Fears Death, won the 2011 World Fantasy Award, and was nominated for a Nebula. Her most recent releases include Lagoon and The Book of Phoenix.

I know what you’re thinking. Damn, I need to read some Nnedi Okorafor. But I’ve got my marathon training coming up, and I have to help the kids with their homework, and schedule my liposuction before my high school reunion. No way I can fit in a 400-page novel! Curse that John O’Neill and his relentless New Treasures temptations!

Calm down, calm down. I got you into this, I can get you out. I know you’re desperate to sound hip at your next Reading Club meeting, and I know you can’t fit another novel into that busy schedule of yours. But what about a novella? That’s like a novel, and between you and me, most people don’t know the difference. Pick up a copy of Binti, Nnedi Okorafor latest book — on sale tomorrow from Tor.com — and you can have it read by Friday. It’s only 96 pages! At the next Club meeting, when that snobby hipster casually mentions The Book of the Phoenix, just say, “Brilliant, of course. But have you read Binti? It’s her absolute latest, darling.” And then you can munch hor d’oeuvres while he makes lame excuses for a change.

Binti is the fourth in Tor.com‘s new line of premium novellas, following The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, Witches of Lychford, and Sunset Mantle. It is $9.99 in trade paperback, and just $2.99 for the digital edition — you’ll never be hip for such a bargain price again.

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The Nightmare of History: The Plot Against America

Monday, September 21, 2015 Thomas Parker Comments 1 comment

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a dark horse, celebrity candidate with no experience in government comes out of nowhere to ride a wave of nativist populism all the way to the Republican presidential nomination – and the White House.

No, I’m not talking about The Donald, though, just as 1967 has entered American mythology as the year of the Summer of Love, here in 2015 we seem to be mired in what is destined to be remembered as the Summer of Trump. (What the two events tell us about historical progress or regress I won’t venture to say.)

Instead, I’m talking about the American hero of heroes, Charles A. Lindbergh, in Philip Roth’s 2004 novel, The Plot Against America. Though the book was received indifferently by most genre critics and readers (a fate often suffered by mainstream authors who poach on the SF preserve), Roth’s book is as genuine and full-blooded an alternate history as any of the classics of the genre – Ward Moore’s Bring the Jubilee (1953), Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962), Keith Roberts’ Pavane (1968), or any number of works by the current king of the form, Harry Turtledove.

In The Plot Against America, the story is told from the point of view of seven year old Philip Roth, a third grader living in the Weequahic section of Newark, New Jersey, with his father, mother, and big brother Sandy. They are a happy, close-knit, sociable group with a circle of gregarious friends. (Think of the working class family depicted with such affection by Woody Allen in his film Radio Days.) Philip is an ordinary American kid, occupied with his school, his family and friends, and with his hobby, that epitome of nerdish inoffensiveness, stamp collecting. (In this, Philip has been inspired by President Roosevelt, himself an ardent philatelist.) The Roth family just gets by on the earnings of Philip’s father (who works as an insurance agent) aided by the efficient budgeting of his mother, but they don’t consider themselves strapped or put-upon; though they are Jews, they share with the rest of their countrymen the optimistic American creed that always expects things to get better.

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Vintage Treasures: The Damiano Trilogy, by R.A. MacAvoy

Monday, September 21, 2015 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

R. A. MacAvoy published her first novel, Tea with the Black Dragon, in May 1983. It was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and received the 1984 Locus Award for Best First Novel. Not too surprisingly, she won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1984.

Her next novel, Damiano, the tale of a wizard’s son befriended by the Archangel Raphael, appeared in 1984, and became the first novel of an ambitious fantasy trilogy. The next two were published as paperback originals by Bantam Books the same year, all with gorgeous wraparound covers by Jim Burns (click the images above for bigger versions.)

Here’s the back covers for all three.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The MX Book of New SH Stories

Monday, September 21, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 4 comments

On October 1, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories will be released, with a major party in London taking place to commemorate the event. It is a MASSIVE, three-volume collection containing 2 Introductions, 3 Forewords, 2 Poems, 2 Essays and 63 brand new Sherlock Holmes stories. In fact, it’s the biggest collection of new Holmes stories ever!

The stories are arranged chronologically, with Part I covering 1881-1889 (23 stories); Part II including 1890-1895 (19 stories) and Part III dealing with 1896-1929 (21 stories). The authors range from those with their first published Holmes stories to New York Times best sellers.

This collection was put together by editor David Marcum, who is my main Solar Pons buddy. He emailed me one January afternoon, telling me he had had a dream the night before. He wanted to put “together an original traditional-Canon Holmes anthology for MX.” David writes Holmes books for MX Publishing in England and he had emailed MX head Steve Emecz already that morning.

David is a Holmes purist and as he wrote to me, “there would be no weird Alternate Universe or present-day stuff, no Holmes-is-the-Ripper, nothing where Watson is at Holmes’ funeral or vice versa.” He wanted traditional stories as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would write them, narrated by Watson.

The part that I chuckle at now is that he said he planned on asking a small and select group of authors to participate. But there was no chance of that. More and more folks signed on and it grew from a single book to two to a trilogy.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Seven Common Approaches to Stories That Use Mythology, Fairy Tales & Other Established Source Material

Sunday, September 20, 2015 Tina Jens Comments 0 Comment

This week in both my fantasy writing classes, I talked to the students about some common approaches to writing stories that incorporate characters or plots from world religions and mythologies or public domain stories and characters. I’ve identified seven distinct techniques.

1. Old Tale – New Audience

A simple re-telling of the original story or myth is perfectly fine – if you’re dealing with a story that is relatively unknown to an American English-speaking audience. A simple retelling of Dracula won’t work; we know all about this Romanian vampire. But a retelling of the doomed love of the Shinto god and goddess Izanami- and Izanagi-no-Mikoto would be fine, as most Americans don’t know that mythology (though, through anime and manga, that is changing).

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Future Treasures: nEvermore!: Tales Of Murder, Mystery & The Macabre, edited by Nancy Kilpatrick and Caro Soles

Sunday, September 20, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Nancy Kilpatrick’s previous anthologies include Evolve: Vampire Stories of the New Undead, Outsiders, and Tesseracts Thirteen. Her other books include The Goth Bible and her 2000 collection The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick. Her most recent offering, co-edited with author Caro Soles (The Danger Dance), is a promising collection of original short stories inspired by the great Edgar Allan Poe.

Dedicated to master dream-weaver, Edgar Allan Poe!

nEvermore! Tales of Murder, Mystery and the Macabre is an homage to the great American writer, the incomparable Edgar Allan Poe, and a must-have for every fan of his work.

Compiled by multi-award winning editors, Nancy Kilpatrick and Caro Soles, nEvermore! presents a tantalizing selection of imaginative stories by New York Times bestselling and prize-winning authors Margaret Atwood; Kelley Armstrong; Richard Christian Matheson; Tanith Lee; William F. Nolan; Nancy Holder; Christopher Rice; Chelsea Quinn Yarbro; Michael Jecks; Lisa Morton; J. Madison Davis; Barbara Fradkin, and many others.

The anthology consists of 21 original tales that blend supernatural and mystery elements in unique reimaginings of Edgar Allan Poe’s exquisite stories.

In addition to the 21 stories, the editors have also added an introduction, Contributor Notes, and two bonus items: a reprint by David Morrell, and an essay on Poe by Uwe Sommerlad.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Queen of the Black Coast”

Sunday, September 20, 2015 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

Art by Brom for "Queen of the Black Coast" — Art by Brom for “Queen of the Black Coast”

Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward continue their insightful re-read of the first Del Rey Conan volume, The Coming of Conan, with the classic “Queen of the Black Coast,” featuring the beautiful pirate queen Bêlit, originally published in the May 1934 issue of Weird Tales.

Here’s Bill:

There’s a wonderfully vivid moment of stillness at the heart of “Queen of the Black Coast;” Conan sits high on the ruined pyramid of a vanished race as night falls over a scene of slaughter, the “black colossus” (which becomes the title of the next story) of the jungle a vast sea of darkness that enfolds him. He is as far away from any aid or comfort as we’ve ever seen him and far beyond the bounds of civilization, his lover lies dead on the ship they shared for years while the corpses of her pirate crew are scattered among the ruins, and a malignant evil that Conan has only glimpsed in a vision bides its time, waiting just as the Cimmerian, too, waits. Here is the man of “gigantic melancholies,” the man whose mind does not break, and, when the moon finally rises and the beasts rush upon him, the man of action.

Read the complete exchange here.

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Back to Ancient Opar

Sunday, September 20, 2015 William Patrick Maynard Comments 2 comments

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan has proven an unstoppable force. While misguided movies, TV series, and musicals do their best to rob the ape man of his savage nature and integrity in the name of mass marketing and political correctness, Burroughs’ original Jungle Lord perseveres. Conventional wisdom may suggest time has passed him by, but it’s the vitality of the original that keeps readers coming back for more. Happily, talents like Joe R. Lansdale, Philip Jose Farmer, and most recently Will Murray have been willing to give fans further adventures of the real Tarzan.

Turn back the clock four decades and you’ll find Philip Jose Farmer’s seminal fictional biography, Tarzan Alive (1972) had much to answer for in terms of launching the Wold Newton movement in popular fiction as well as boosting Burroughs’ cachet. While the book may be relatively obscure today, the ripples it created are still felt on the beaches of pulp fiction. For his part, Farmer launched a series of officially sanctioned books recounting the history of ancient Opar. Longtime readers of Burroughs’ work will know that Opar was the first of the author’s lost cities (an outpost of forgotten Atlantis) that survived undiscovered in Tarzan’s African jungle.

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