By Ryan Harvey Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. A fierce warrior, magically born from a troll mother in the shape of a man, leads a troll army against the might of the elves. He stares at the troll king and mutters to himself: “I will succeed to your throne — but what good is that? What good is anything?” Thus speaks Valgard, half of the protagonist of The Broken Sword. His words contain ambition contradicted with…
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Special Black Gate Feature by John R. Fultz All rights reserved. Copyright 2006 by New Epoch Press. When speaking of the world’s greatest writers of fantasy fiction, there is one name that continues to surface among the true experts, if not on the lips of the general public: Darrell Schweitzer. Most widely known as a long-time editor of the legendary Weird Tales magazine (along with George Scithers and John Betancourt), Schweitzer is a prolific fantasist whose mythopoeic stories and novels…
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by Ryan Harvey All rights reserved. Copyright 2006 by New Epoch Press. When Robert E. Howard discovered the character Conan in 1932, his writing took on a feverish intensity as the barbarian warrior turned into a literary obsession that allowed his creator’s natural skills and inclinations as a writer to bloom. Likewise in 1932, when Clark Ashton Smith discovered the last continent of dying Zothique, he knew that he had found the ideal setting for his poetic and dark imagination…
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by David Soyka Fantasy Magazine, Issue 2 [Prime Books, edited by Sean Wallace, $5.95] Realms of Fantasy, August 2006 [Sovereign Media, edited by Shawna McCarthy, $3.99] Heliotrope, August 2006 [Fantasy Book Spot, www.heliotropemag.com] In an August 4, 2006 blog post, Charles Stross remarks that, Fantasy is, almost by definition, consolatory and escapist literature. Pure fantasy doesn’t really tell us anything about the world we live in… Of course, that depends on how you define “fantasy,” pure or otherwise, which, as…
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A Look at Current Fantasy Magazines By David Soyka Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. Philip Roth can write an alternate history, Cormac McCarthy an end-of-the-world tale, Margaret Atwood a Frankenstein parable even as she claims she doesn’t write science fiction junk. No one calls Thomas Pynchon a fantasy writer, though whatever the hell he writes surely is fantastical. But they don’t become tarnished as genre writers when they write genre. But, times are changing. In the…
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By Howard Andrew Jones Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. When did you first create Morlock? Morlock emerged in a massive and utterly immature novel series I was writing as a teenager. He appeared out of nowhere, and he was more interesting than the Lessingham-like hero, so when that series died from (my) boredom, I thought I’d write some about this Morlock Ambrosius guy. So I must have been writing about him as early as thirty years…
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By Ryan Harvey Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. In the beginning, there was Clark Ashton Smith… …in the end, there was Clark Ashton Smith. Smith was a one-man literary movement, an alpha and omega unto himself. Although a major early fantasy innovator whom many later writers credit as an influence, he did not begin an ongoing trend in fantasy fiction as some other pioneers did. Contrariwise, he seems to have borrowed his style from almost no…
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A Look at Current Sci-fi and Fantasy Magazines By David Soyka Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. Greatest Uncommon Denominator is a new biannual that features decidedly strange stories, poetry, essays and artwork. The Spring 2007 debut, identified in an apparent attempt to be clever as Issue #0, has a cover page with the torso of a young boy whose stomach has a very large mouth with a lolling tongue. Gives you some idea of its savory…
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A Look at Current Sci-fi and Fantasy Magazines By David Soyka Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. The novel serialization was a grand tradition of newspaper entertainment that has long since fallen by the wayside. One reason why Dickens has so many plot turns is that he frequently wrote in installments, and leaving readers wondering what happens helps sell next week’s paper. The marketing value of this practice began to decline when the proliferation of inexpensive mass…
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The first few issues of Black Gate magazine have seen rave reviews from some of the most respected publications in the industry, including Locus, Interzone, SF Site, and many others. Here are some brief excerpts from some of the highlights. Where possible, links to the complete review are provided. Year’s Best Volumes The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror #14 2003 Edition Edited by Stephen Jones Even Weird Tales wasn’t as good looking as Black Gate: Adventures in Fantasy Literature….
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