Black Gate – Page 751 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

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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Clarkesworld 108 Now on Sale

Saturday, September 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Neil Clarke’s editorial in the latest issue of Clarkesworld is entitled “The Sad Truth About Short Fiction Reviews.”

The sad truth about short fiction reviews is that the overwhelming majority of them have little-to-no impact on readership. After monitoring the incoming traffic for the online version of this magazine for nine years, I can say that the typical review has a statistically insignificant impact on the readership of a story or issue. The only notable exception to this has been reviews on high traffic sites, like io9 or Tor.com, that focus specifically on a single story. As the number of stories in a review increases, there’s a dramatic drop-off in story readership… Shouldn’t reviews of good stories have the effect of encouraging people to read the story?

In a discussion on his editorial here at Black Gate, Neil elaborated on his thoughts:

A review that doesn’t send new readers is functionally equivalent to emailing your thoughts to the author. Nothing wrong with that, but there are reviews that send the author a message and readers to the story. I’m saying that the we should all aspire to the former and that most reviewers aren’t. That’s the sad truth I was referring to in the title.

Issue #108 of Clarkesworld has seven stories — five new, and two reprints — from Robert Reed, Erica L. Satifka, Bao Shu, Elizabeth Bourne, Benjanun Sriduangkaew, Tom Purdom, and Una McCormack.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

Saturday, September 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

If there was a predominate topic last month at Black Gate, it was unquestionably the Hugo Awards.

Black Gate was nominated for a Hugo Award for the first time this year — an honor we declined on April 19. The Awards were presented at the World Science Fiction Convention on August 22, and our coverage of the awards and its immediate aftermath, written by me and Jay Maynard, produced the top three BG articles in August. In fact, those three posts were read more than the next 30 articles on the list combined.

The most popular non-Hugo article this month was Elizabeth Cady’s look at Aristophanes’ The Birds, “Ancient Worlds: The First Fantasy World.” Next was our report on a controversial analysis of NPR’s Top 100 Books list, “New Statesmen on the “Shockingly Offensive” 100 Best Fantasy and SF Novels.”

Sixth was David B. Coe’s second essay on the 2015 Hugo Kerfuffle, “Enough, Part II,” followed by the 8th entry in our very popular Discovering Robert E. Howard series, “Jeffrey Shanks on The Worldbuilding of REH.” Coming in at number 8, and sticking with the Robert E. Howard theme, was Bob Byrne’s “The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ramblings on REH.”

Number 9 last month was M. Harold Page on “Chivalry: Not Really About Opening Doors (and Still Quite a Useful Coping Strategy).” And rounding out the Top 10 was another in our Discovering Robert E. Howard series, Don Herron’s “Pigeons From Hell From Lovecraft.”

The complete list of Top Articles for August follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular blog categories for the month.

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New Treasures: The Sea of Trolls Trilogy by Nancy Farmer

Saturday, September 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I’ve been very excited by what I’ve seen from Saga Press in the last few months. They’ve published novels from some of the most exciting new names in fantasy, including Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings, and Genevieve Valentine’s Persona, among many others. And just this month they brought us John Joseph Adam’s timely new anthology Loosed upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction.

But mixed in with that sharp nose for exciting new work is a keen talent for finding and repackaging overlooked older fantasy. So I was just as excited to see Saga bring Nancy Farmer’s The Sea of Trolls trilogy, originally published in hardcover by Atheneum Books in 2004-2009, out in mass market paperback for the first time, with a gorgeous series of new covers by Richard Anderson. The release dates were:

The Sea of Trolls (496 pages) – June 30, 2015
The Land of the Silver Apples (496 pages) – July 28, 2015
The Islands of the Blessed (496 pages) – August 25, 2015

All three books are now on sale from Saga, priced at $8.99 in paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. Check ’em out.

Win a Copy of Gestapo Mars by Victor Gischler

Saturday, September 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

On Monday, we told you about the upcoming release of a brand new novel of far future adventure and Nazi mayhem, Victor Gischler’s Gestapo Mars.

Gestapo Mars, a Carter Sloan novel, combines science fiction, Nazis, assassins, and disgusting gelatinous aliens in a fast-paced, rollicking adventure, on sale September 22 from Titan Books.

We are very pleased to announce that we have three copies to give away to readers of Black Gate, compliments of Titan Books.

How do you enter? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the subject “Gestapo Mars,” and a one-sentence review of your favorite Nazi science fiction story (bonus points if it includes Gestapo!) That’s it — what could possibly be easier? We’ll announce the winners in 10 days, and present some of the best entries here.

Three winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries. All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Or anywhere postage for a hefty trade paperback is more than, like, 10 bucks (practically, that means US and Canada).

Gestapo Mars will be released on Tuesday by Titan Books. It is 277 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital version. Learn more at the Titan Books website.

Modular: Kickstarting The Northlands Saga Complete (Frog God Games)

Friday, September 18, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 3 comments

The Vikings are coming!

I’m a fan of Frog God Games. Rising from the ashes of Third Edition D&D’s Necromancer Games, they make RPG products for Pathfinder, 5^th Edition and Swords & Wizardry. Way back in 2014, I wrote here about The Lost Lands, the campaign world that would synthesize almost all of the Necromancer and FGG products — from classics like Rappan Athuk and Gary Gygax’s Necropolis to newer deadly adventures like The Slumbering Tsar saga.

I’ve happily backed several Lost Lands Kickstarters the past few years (including Sword of Air, Cults of the Sundered Kingdoms) and there’s been a ton of Pathfinder goodness for me (Don’t let the list price put you off — the PDFs are more affordable). The latest Lost Lands Kickstarter, which wraps up October 2 (and is 75% funded as I type this) is one I have anxiously been awaiting.

In 2010 and 2011, Frog God released the first four modules in Kenneth Spencer’s series set in the Northlands. The first two had a bit of an American Eskimo feel, then moved into pure Viking territory in the third and fourth. You can read my thoughts on the series here.

Then, the modules stopped coming. Greg Vaughan, Pathfinder Creative Director (and author of the previously mentioned Slumbering Tsar epic), told me that The Northlands was on hold and that it would become a separate campaign book for The Lost Lands. So, I waited… and waited…. and waited. Wait no more!

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Dear Prudentia: What is Best in Life?

Friday, September 18, 2015 mariebilodeau Comments 7 comments

He offers you lamentations. I offer you orgies. And you vote for him. Really?

Dear Prudentia,

I know how it goes. When one asks a mighty barbarian warrior: “What is best in life?” The typical answer should be: “Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.” The first two are fine, but I must admit that the third one perturbs me. I mean, I don’t actually like hearing women cry. It makes me feel all sad, and I tear up easily, which isn’t good for troop morale. Once, I hiccupped a sob, tried to pretend it was a sneeze, and bit on my own recently sharpened sword to hide my grief. It looked pretty badass so the men were impressed and gave me wide berth, but still, I can only cut half of my face off so many times before I’m too mutilated to be understood. Plus, my tetanus shot is out of date and that’s bound to turn out badly. Please help me to enjoy the lamentations of women, as ever good conqueror should.

Grinning Anonymously

Dear Grinning,

First off, you should never let your shots expire. You just never know what you’ll encounter on that battlefield. Some people’s arrows are filthy with cow dung, did you know that? You could get terribly ill that way, which would tear your attention away from conquering.

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Future Treasures: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Friday, September 18, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I love a good caper novel. Fantasy doesn’t have enough of them. There’s Steven Brust’s Jhereg books, of course, and Scott Lynch’s marvelous Gentleman Bastard trilogy (The Lies of Locke Lamora, Red Seas Under Red Skies, and The Republic of Thieves). But we could certainly use a few more. Leigh Bardugo sets out to correct that deficiency with Six of Crows, a very promising new novel featuring “a cunning leader with a plan for every occasion, nigh-impossible odds, an entertainingly combative team of skilled misfits, a twisty plot, and a nerve-wracking cliffhanger” (Publishers Weekly). It’s on sale September 29 from Henry Holt and Co.

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price — and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone…

A convict with a thirst for revenge. A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager. A runaway with a privileged past.

A spy known as the Wraith. A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums. A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes.

Six dangerous outcasts. One impossible heist. Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction — if they don’t kill each other first.

Leigh Bardugo is the author of the popular YA novels Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, and Ruin and Rising (collectively The Grisha Trilogy). Read her story “The Too-Clever Fox” for free at Tor.com.

Six of Crows will be published by Henry Holt and Co. on September 29, 2015. It is 480 pages, priced at $18.99 in hardcover and $8.99 for the digital edition.

Persian Fire: History like Harold Lamb Used to Do It

Friday, September 18, 2015 Comments 7 comments

300 without the attack rhinos, Greece versus the known world, and — best of all — the Persian Wars from the Persian perspective. You can see how Persian Fire by Tom Holland ended up as another one of my Barter Books finds.

It’s a book that doesn’t quite live up to the promise on the dust jacket, but does deliver something else almost as spectacular. Yes, he launches us into the history of the Persian Empire and what came before it. However, a few chapters in and Athens and Sparta steal the story.

It’s not Holland’s fault.

Though he draws on archaeology to bring to life the palaces and people of Persia, just like other historians, he has but one substantial contemporary source: Herodotus, the father of History. The end result is a retelling of — to those of us who have studied Ancient History — a very familiar tale.

However, this is a tale supremely well and wisely told, pretty much as Harold Lamb would have done it. (It’s also the kind of sweeping history that the History Manifesto calls for, but which academics rarely seem to deliver (because few of them could write their way out of a paper bag).)

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Goth Chick News: You Don’t Have to Go To Hell, But You Can’t Stay Here – Ghost Sex Comes to TIFF

Thursday, September 17, 2015 Sue Granquist Comments 3 comments

You can always count on interesting offerings from the Toronto International Film Festival. Founded in 1976, “TIFF” is now one of the most prestigious events of its kind in the world, considered second only to Cannes in terms of high-profile pics, stars and market activity.

Screening close to 400 films each season, just a few of the notables which launched at TIFF include American Beauty, Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech, all of which went on to win Best Picture at the following Oscars.

So perhaps we should entertain such hopes for Lace Crater, an indy film which made its debut at TIFF on Tuesday.

Being billed as a lo-fi, horror-comedy, the trailer teases the story of an awkward young woman (Lindsay Burge) who gets a sexually transmitted disease from a ghost. That’s right: this woman has sex with a ghost and suffers the consequences.

And you thought your twenties sucked.

Lace Crater is the feature directorial debut of writer/director and local Chicago, Northwestern University grad Harrison Atkins. Here’s the official synopsis.

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