Black Gate – Page 761 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

December 2015 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

Tuesday, November 3, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The December issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction contains a big new novella from Greg Egan, plus stories by M. Bennardo, Robert Reed, Rich Larson, and others. Here’s the description from the website:

You’ll find a brilliant new novella from Hugo-Award–winning author Greg Egan in our December 2015 issue. The tale combines awesome concepts for putting the asteroid belt’s orbital mechanics to work for humanity with the staggering cost of a civil war on Vesta. You won’t soon forget the brave men and women who struggle to survive in “The Four Thousand, The Eight Hundred.”

Hugo-Award–winning author Robert Reed considers the stark implications of the Fermi Paradox in “Empty”; new to Asimov’s author Rich Larson has a gleeful take on an audacious “Bidding War”; new author Julian Mortimer Smith maroons a young man off the Labrador coast with an unearthly “Come-From-Aways”; newish author Garrett Ashley continues the nautical theme with a story about thrill-seeking boys who tempt fate by “Riding the Waves of Leviathan”; another newish author, Amanda Forrest, escorts us into the Himalayas for the bittersweet tale “Of Apricots and Dying”; and M. Bennardo contemplates a very bad decision in “We Jump Down Into the Dark.”

Non-fiction this month includes Robert Silverberg’s Reflections column, which examines Non-Asimovian Robots; Peter Heck’s On Books, which looks at new books by James Morrow, Peter F. Hamilton, Carolyn Ives Gilman (“put Gilman on your list of writers to watch”), Alan Smale, and others; an editorial by Sheila Williams, and poetry.

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In the Wake Of Sister Blue: Chapter Three

Monday, November 2, 2015 markrigney Comments 0 Comment

Linked below, you’ll find the third installment of a brand-new serialized novel, In the Wake Of Sister Blue.

A number of you will already be familiar with my Tales Of Gemen (“The Trade,” “The Find,” and “The Keystone“), and if you enjoyed those titles, I think you’ll also find much to like in this latest venture. In this sequence, we keep pace with Maer and Doss, but we also expand our horizons via Mother Coal and a visit to the capital city. Their entwined fates, and those of Vashear, all lead inexorably to the slam-bang opening of Chapter Four, which I’ll post in two weeks’ time.

As I’ve said before, bear in mind that this as an experiment, an experiment performed in the most chaotic of laboratory environments (which is to say, my basement). I haven’t written to the end. I’m not offering you something that’s already complete. Instead, I’ll be doling out the breadcrumbs of story just as fast as I can tear them from the fictive loaf, and when we reach the end, we’ll get there simultaneously.

Welcome to adventure, In the Wake Of Sister Blue.

Tell your friends. Off we go — and if you’re just discovering this portal, don’t forget to begin at the beginning.

Read the first installment of In the Wake Of Sister Blue here.

Read the third installment here.

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The Old Ones Unleashed: Apotheosis – Stories of Human Survival After The Rise of The Elder Gods

Monday, November 2, 2015 Adrian Simmons Comments 1 comment

It isn’t all bad, some of the Newcomers mix a fine screwdriver

Post Halloween funk got you down? Looking for something to cut the coming wave of forced holiday cheer? I have come from Kadath in the wastes to bring you news to make your sick heart feel so glad. Jason Andrew’s anthology Apotheosis: Stories of Survival After the Rise of the Elder Gods has been released to the world. A fearsome tome, seeping into your consciousness in both hardcopy and electronic formats.

It would be a lie of omission if I didn’t come clean and point out that my own story, “Dilution Solution,” is in the anthology. It would also be crass for me to rave about the quality of my own work — which I will simply describe as a tribe of self-gratifying warboys defending the lingering shreds of humanity, their fragile minds protected by crappy 90s virtual reality technology.

And far more grisly tales await in this collection — 17 tales to make you lose sleep, hoping that the stars are not right.

For some outside opinions, check out reviews from Black Gate contributor Fletcher Vrendenburgh and adventure aficionado Keith West at Adventures Fantastic.

New Treasures: Envy of Angels by Matt Wallace

Monday, November 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Tor.com has had some impressive success with their stellar line-up of Fall novellas. Their first title, Kai Ashante Wilson’s The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the Best Books of 2015, and after a strong critical response for the second novella, Witches of Lychford, Paul Cornell has already announced a sequel.

Their most recent release, Matt Wallace’s Envy of Angels: A Sin du Jour Affair, the first entry in a new urban fantasy series, was published on October 20. Matt Wallace is also the author of the futuristic sports thriller Slingers. The sequel to Envy of Angels, Lustlocked, has already been announced for January. (Click on the front and back covers above for bigger versions.)

Envy of Angels is the seventh title in Tor.com‘s debut publishing venture, which includes exciting new releases from K. J. Parker, Nnedi Okorafor, Alter S. Reiss, Daniel Polansky, and many others. Tor.com‘s Marketing & Publicity Manager, Mordicai Knode, talked about the genesis of the line in his first article for us, “Why Novellas? Tor.com‘s Stellar New Fantasy & SF Releases.”

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A New Star Trek TV Series is in the Works

Monday, November 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 12 comments

Hollywood Reporter is reporting that a new Star Trek TV series is in development, for broadcast in early 2017.

The new series will be the sixth live-action show to be based on Gene Roddenberry’s original creation, which ran from 1966-67 on NBC. It will be produced by Alex Kurtzman, co-writer of the 2009 reboot Star Trek and its sequel Star Trek Into Darkness, for CBS Television Studios. It is scheduled to premiere in January 2017 with a preview episode on CBS, before it moves exclusively to CBS All Access, an on-demand and streaming service.

The new Star Trek will introduce new characters seeking imaginative new worlds and new civilizations, while exploring the dramatic contemporary themes that have been a signature of the franchise since its inception in 1966… A search is under way for a writer to take on the cult hit. The franchise is poised to celebrate its 50th anniversary as the original series debuted Sept. 8, 1966…

CBS TV Studios distributed the original series, which was produced by Paramount Television and Desilu Productions. Created by Gene Roddenberry and starring William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, the series ran for three seasons and 79 episodes from 1966-67 on NBC and became a monster hit via syndication. It spawned an animated series (1973-74), a series of feature films — starting in 1979 — and four TV follow-ups including The Next Generation (1987-1994), Deep Space Nine (1993-99), Voyager (1995-2001) and Enterprise (2001-05).

News of a new Star Trek TV series comes as the franchise has been mired in rights issues between CBS and Paramount after Viacom merged with CBS in 2000. CBS Corp. absorbed Paramount for television, while Paramount Studios — the company that distributed the films — went to Viacom.

No news yet on what time frame the series will take place it, although it is reportedly not linked to the new movie franchise. Read the complete article here. (Hat tip to io9 for the news.)

Vintage Treasures: Cautionary Tales by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Monday, November 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

There’s nothing quite like finally laying your hands on a book that’s eluded you for years. That happened this week with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s first collection, Cautionary Tales, published in paperback by Warner Books in 1980 with a moody and gorgeous cover by Leo & Diane Dillon, showing a group of aliens and humans conducting a (surprisingly effective) seance. Cautionary Tales collects 13 science fiction and dark fantasy stories published between 1971 and 1978 in magazines like Galaxy and IF, and anthologies like Chrysalis. and Faster Than Light.

It has an introduction by none other than James Tiptree, Jr, only recently revealed as ex-Army major and CIA operative Alice Sheldon in 1980. Tiptree writes:

If you are looking for the jolly engineering dilemmas of plastic space jocks on the Aldebaran mail run, look elsewhere. You will indeed find a spaceship here, but what goes on among the all-too-real crew of “Dead in Irons” is harsh human shame, a story of innocence compelled to participate in ghastly deeds, able at the end only to strike one lost blow of vengeance. Deftly touched behind the grind of pain is a convincing extrapolation of the star civilization that bore it.

On the other hand, and just to surprise you, Yarbro has given here what is the only merry, even charming tale of After the Holocaust that I can recall: “Frog Pond,” And for still another facet, view the curdlingly mundane problems besetting a lady ghoul attempting to gain access to the city morgue, in “Disturb Not My Slumbering Fair.” (It should be noted that Yarbro does a brisk business in vampires in another of her many lines of work.) But for pure alien beauty, remarkably seen through alien eyes, “Un Bel Di” is quite unforgettable, even apart from the cruelty that is perpetrated there.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Haining’s The Final Adventures of SH

Monday, November 2, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 1 comment

There are a LOT of books, fiction and non, about Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle that are worthy of standing alongside the sixty-story Canon of original Holmes tales. Today, we’re going to look at one I particularly like.

Barnes and Noble has been reproducing classic works for years and selling them at affordable prices. Their editions are a great way to get folks introduced to the classics.

But their output ranges father afield, and my Sherlockian bookshelf includes several of their titles, such as The Sherlock Holmes Companion, The Lost Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and The Final Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.

This last book is similar to the out of print and often difficult to find Sherlock Holmes: The Published Apocrypha by Jack Tracy. Both books include the “almost Sherlock Holmes” stories and plays that don’t fit in the Canon, but are certainly in the neighborhood. Back before you could find everything you ever wanted to look for on the Internet, The Final Adventures was quite the resource.

The introduction discusses the pieces that make up the book and you will find some interesting tidbits (much of which was previously in Tracy’s book).

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Future Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 2015, edited by Greg Bear

Monday, November 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

The annual Nebula Awards Showcase volumes, which have been published every year since 1966, gather the most acclaimed short fiction our industry produces each year — including all the Nebula Award winners, and many of the runners-up — as well as author appreciations, yearly wrap-ups, novel excerpts, and other fascinating articles. The 2015 volume contains some of the most talked-about fiction of the past several years, including Rachel Swirsky’s “If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love,” Sophia Samatar’s “Selkie Stories Are For Losers,” Aliette de Bodard’s “The Waiting Stars,” and many others. Here’s the description.

The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories of the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). The editor, selected by SFWA’s anthology Committee (chaired by Mike Resnick), is American science fiction and fantasy writer Greg Bear, author of over thirty novels, including the Nebula Award-winning Darwin’s Radio and Moving Mars. This year’s volume includes the winners of the Andre Norton, Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars Awards, as well as the Nebula Award winners, and features Ann Leckie, Nalo Hopkinson, Rachel Swirsky, Aliette de Bodard, and Vylar Kaftan, with additional articles and poems by authors such as Robin Wayne Bailey, Samuel R. Delany, Terry A. Garey, Deborah P Kolodji, and Andrew Robert Sutton.

We covered the previous volume, Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edited by Kij Johnson, last May (and the TOCs for the now-classic first three volumes are here). Read all about this year’s Nebula winners here.

Nebula Awards Showcase 2015 will be published by Pyr Books December 8, 2015. It is 347 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition.

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Martin Mundt

Sunday, November 1, 2015 Tina Jens Comments 0 Comment

This week’s Pro-Tip comes from Martin Mundt, who has a cult following among attendees of live readings series in Chicago, and fans of dark, twisted, humorous horror. His third short story collection, Synchronized Sleepwalking, has just come out.

To Outline or Not to Outline — What Works for You?

I don’t know if I approach the concept of outlining a story in the same way as anyone else. I start with an idea, and then I begin brainstorming about it, coming up with scenes, characters, dialogue and descriptions that seem appropriate. These can be anywhere from one sentence to one page long. Somewhere along the line of writing down these bits and pieces of the story – whether they’re bits and pieces I end up using or not – I end up figuring out the story and the characters. I normally end up with between 4 and 20 pages of notes, and I usually get the opening and closing scenes near the beginning of the process. The bulk, but not all, of the scenes, in the middle of the story, come later. Then I arrange the scenes in order, and fit them all together from beginning to end.

So, it’s not an outline actually, but it’s the way I’ve always written stories, and probably one of the reasons my stories sound a little off. For good or bad, I can’t say.

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When the End of the World is a Mercy Killing: Cthulhu Apocalypse

Sunday, November 1, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Pelgrane Press has produced some of my favorite RPGs and game adventures over the last few years, including The Dying Earth, 13th Age, and the brilliant Ashen Stars. Their latest release, Cthulhu Apocalypse, is a trio of linked adventures for Trail of Cthulhu, which suppose that that the world ended on November 2nd, 1936 and, now that the stars are right, horrific aliens — and darker things — have claimed the remains of the planet.

Cthulhu Apocalypse consists of three standalone products. The first, The Dead White World, contains five linked adventures in the aftermath of disaster that take Investigators through Britain, across the sea to America, and beyond the veils of reality as they struggle to survive. The Apocalypse Machine is a sandbox setting for the award-winning Gumshoe system, which gives Game Masters the tools to create their own global catastrophe, from the first strange rumblings to the final, cataclysmic event. And the third, Slaves of the Mother, contains three long adventures set years later, as the few survivors find their humanity cracking and moulting in the process of becoming something new.

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