Black Gate – Page 772 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Sasquan Announces Record Voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards

Tuesday, August 4, 2015 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, announced this morning that voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards has reached record levels.

Sasquan is pleased to announce that it received a recordbreaking 5,950 valid ballots for the 2015 Hugo Awards. 5,914 voters used the online voting system and 36 submitted paper ballots. The 5,950 total surpasses the vote total record for previous years (3,587 ballots, set by Loncon in 2014) by more than 65%.

More than 57% of the convention members eligible to vote cast ballots this year, making this the highest level of participation in Hugo Awards voting in the past decade.

Sasquan will announce the Hugo Awards winners Saturday, Aug. 22, at 8 p.m. at a ceremony hosted by authors Tananarive Due and David Gerrold.

For those unable to attend the ceremonies, Sasquan will also live stream the Awards ceremony here. There will also be a text stream available on the Hugo Awards webpage.

Voting for the Hugos is now closed. Sasquan will release final vote counts at the conclusion of the Aug. 22 ceremony.

Black Gate declined our first Hugo nomination this year, on account of the bloc voting from the Rabid Puppy campaign. My comments on this year’s Hugo ballot are here.

The August Fantasy Magazine Rack

Tuesday, August 4, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Summer is a great time for reading, and there were some fabulous new magazines released last month. The Fantasy Magazine rack is a snapshot of all the recent fantasy fiction magazines that deserve your attention. Magazines are a great way to discover new writers — not to mention reviews, news, opinion, and an entertaining way to keep up with the industry.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our July Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

As we’ve mentioned before, all of these magazines are completely dependent on fans and readers to keep them alive. Many are marginal operations for whom a handful of subscriptions may mean the difference between life and death. Why not check one or two out, and try a sample issue? There are magazines here for every budget, from completely free to $7.50/issue. If you find something intriguing, I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on a subscription. I think you’ll find it’s money very well spent.

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Vintage Treasures: Lyrec by Gregory Frost

Monday, August 3, 2015 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Gregory Frost is the author of the popular Shadowbridge novels (Shadowbridge and Lord Tophet) and the World Fantasy Award nominee Fitcher’s Brides, among others.

But I admit the the novel I still give to friends to introduce them to Frost is his debut Lyrec, a fantasy romp about a long-lived space traveler, his talking cat Borregad, and the evil menace they’ve tracked across countless star systems, the ruthless Miradomon. Lyrec was published as a paperback original by Ace in 1984, and went through multiple reprintings. This one was on a lot of reading lists in the 80s.

Lovelorn Lyrec and wise-cracking Borregad have been companions through world after world, adventure after adventure. They seek Lyrec’s lost lady, and vengeance for the obliteration of their homeworld. But the evil Miradomon is always one step ahead, leaving a dark trail of destruction behind him.

Crossing a chain of parallel universes, our heroes must take on new identities in each new world. In his latest incarnation, Lyrec has done quite well for himself. He is young, strong, handsome, skilled in the arts of war and song. Poor Borregad blew it. He’s stuck in the body of a cat. And Miradomon?

This time, he’s a god.

Lyrec was published in February 1984 by Ace Books. It is 267 pages, priced at $2.75 in paperback. The cover is by Romas. It was released in digital format in 2011, and is currently available for $4.99.

See all of our recent Vintage Treasures here.

Enough, Part II

Monday, August 3, 2015 David B. Coe Comments 54 comments

A couple of weeks ago in this space, I waded into the Hugos nomination controversy with a statement about my own view of awards. Today, I wish to take that discussion in a somewhat different direction.

I’d like to begin today’s installment with an anecdote. Back in 1996, my wife and I were watching the Academy Awards, rooting for our favorite films to win. One of those films was Apollo 13, which was up for nine awards that night, including best visual effects.

The visual effects category was unusual that year, in that only two movies were nominated. And to us, Apollo 13 seemed to have it in the bag. In the introduction of the category the presenters talked about all that director Ron Howard had done to reproduce faithfully for the screen the launch and flight of an Apollo spacecraft, including the use of reduced gravity aircraft. It was impressive stuff. To top it off, the movie was up against Babe, a movie in which pigs and other barnyard animals had been made to look like they were really talking.

So what happened? The pig won. We were flabbergasted.

Looking back in later years, though, I understood what I hadn’t then. As good as the effects were for Apollo 13, there had been, in past years, other movies that recreated space flight, including zero gravity conditions, and did so convincingly. Apollo 13’s effects were amazing, but they didn’t change the game. On the other hand, no one had ever seen a pig talk quite like this.

The Academy wasn’t saying that Apollo 13’s effects were bad. They might not even have been saying that Babe’s effects were better. They were recognizing the innovation, as awards of this sort often do.

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Future Treasures: The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson

Monday, August 3, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Tor has brought us some strong debuts over the past 18 months. Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Marc Turner’s When the Heavens Fall, and Rjurik Davidson’s Unwrapped Sky have all made waves, and I expect to see great things from them in the future. It’s great to see a publisher with such a keen eye for new talent.

Tor’s latest find, Kai Ashante Wilson, releases his first fantasy novel next month: The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, and it looks like one of their strongest discoveries yet. It’s a sword & sorcery tale of gods and mortals, magic and steel, and life and death that Ken Liu calls “Lyrical and polyphonous, gorgeous and brutal.”

Since leaving his homeland, the earthbound demigod Demane has been labeled a sorcerer. With his ancestors’ artifacts in hand, the Sorcerer follows the Captain, a beautiful man with song for a voice and hair that drinks the sunlight.

The two of them are the descendants of the gods who abandoned the Earth for Heaven, and they will need all the gifts those divine ancestors left to them to keep their caravan brothers alive.

The one safe road between the northern oasis and southern kingdom is stalked by a necromantic terror. Demane may have to master his wild powers and trade humanity for godhood if he is to keep his brothers and his beloved captain alive.

Wilson has published several popular stories which you can read free at Tor.com, including “The Devil in America” and “Super Bass.” Read an excerpt from The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps here.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Moriarty Chronicles

Monday, August 3, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 3 comments

Perhaps my favorite Sherlock Holmes pastiche is 1974’s The Return of Moriarty by John Gardner. In it, Professor Moriarty (who did not perish at the Reichenbach Falls) is a Victorian Era godfather, with a criminal organization the envy of the American mob in the Roaring Twenties. A sequel followed it the next year, The Revenge of Moriarty. The trilogy was completed with Moriarty, just a few weeks before Gardner passed away in 2008.

Having completed one muddle of a screenplay about a Civil War naval battle, I took it upon myself to contact John and tell him I was writing a pilot for a proposed TV series about The Return. Extremely polite and friendly, he told me to send it to him when I was done. I did. He and his agent, less than impressed with this amateur effort from a self-taught screenwriter, understandably, passed.

I stayed in email contact with John (who was always nice) up until his death, taking one serious stab at revising the pilot and expanding it to two-hours. I never did resubmit it to his agent (John having passed away by then).

So, read on about The Moriarty Chronicles, a British TV series you, alas, will never see.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: A Story Analysis Worksheet

Sunday, August 2, 2015 Tina Jens Comments 3 comments

Peer review or small group critiquing is one of the most common techniques authors use to improve their story drafts. Virtually every author I know has been a part of a critique group at one time or another. Some authors are strong proponents of the exercise, others are adamantly opposed to it. I suspect the primary factor in how authors feel about them is whether their early experiences were helpful, or not.

Feedback that amounts to little more than, “I really liked this!” or “I don’t really like this kind of story,” are equally unhelpful. While the first is more pleasant to hear, it’s no more constructive than the second.

Critique groups are just one of the manuscript analysis exercises I have my students do. Done in-depth, they can take a great deal of time. It is not unusual for it to take five hours to do a written critique of a 3,000 word story. It may take much longer than that.

The instructions I give to my students are as follows.

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Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read The Coming of Conan

Sunday, August 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Bill Ward and Howard Andrew Jones have wrapped up their detailed and highly entertaining look at Fritz Leiber’s famous Lankhmar stories over at Howard Andrew Jones’ website. But without pausing for breath, they’ve leaped into a re-read of Robert E. Howard’s classic tales of Conan, starting with the Del Rey edition of The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, and Howard’s essay on the world Conan adventured in, “The Hyborian Age.” Here’s Bill:

“The Hyborian Age” isn’t the place to start if you are new to Conan, in fact I’d say it’s really only interesting if you are already familiar with Conan’s world, as well as the enthusiasms of Conan’s creator. REH himself didn’t start with “The Hyborian Age,” either, he started with the character of Conan, only settling down to iron out his “world bible” once he had three Conan stories under his belt and realized he wanted to write many more… It’s the history of a lost age before the rise of the civilizations we are familiar with, but it’s also a way of getting around history. REH wrote fast and he wrote for publication and, though he loved history and writing historical fiction, he felt it took too much time to get the research just right. Enter the secondary world of his own slice of pre-history, a way of not only having a world he didn’t have to exhaustively research, but also a vehicle for bringing together the character and flavor of many different cultures and eras that would allow Conan to adventure in the equivalent of everything from the Ancient Near East to Medieval France. That may not be completely clear just from reading “The Hyborian Age,” but it is clear from the stories themselves, as well as by glancing at the two maps REH used when planning his world — his Hyborian Kingdoms superimposed over a map of Europe, North Africa, and the Near East is probably even more eloquent than his essay…

Join the discussion here.

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New Treasures: Quaternity by Kenneth Mark Hoover

Sunday, August 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

U.S. Marshal John T. Marwood is a soldier in an eternal war, and he’s been traveling a long, long time. Some of the epic battles he’s seen include Thermopylae. Masada. and Agincourt. And when he came to New Mexico Territory, circa 1874, and a small town called Haxan, it became one of the most epic showdowns of his long career.

But before he was a Marshall, Marwood followed a darker path. In this prequel novel, Kenneth Mark Hoover explores some of Marwood’s mysterious past, telling the tale of his search for the fabled golden city of Cibola… and a battle against something very dark inside himself.

I bought the first John Marwood weird western novel, Haxan, at the World Fantasy Convention last year, and I was lucky enough to receive a copy of Quaternity at this year’s Nebulas here in Chicago. This look like one of the better dark fantasy series currently on the market. If you’re a fan of weird westerns, check it out.

Hell is Truth Seen Too Late! Before he became a U.S. federal marshal in Haxan, John Marwood rode with a band of killers up and down the Texas/Mexico border. Led by Abram Botis, an apostate from the Old Country, this gang of thirteen killers search for the fabled golden city of Cibola, even riding unto the barren, blood-soaked plains of Comancheria. And in this violent crucible of blood, dust, and wind, Marwood discovers a nightmarish truth about himself, and conquers the silent, wintry thing coiled inside him.

Quaternity was published by ChiZine Publications on May 21, 2015. It is 299 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Erik Mohr.

The Mystery of Peter S. Beagle’s I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons

Sunday, August 2, 2015 John ONeill Comments 28 comments

Peter Beagle is one of the finest living fantasy writers. His 1968 novel The Last Unicorn has long been considered a classic, and The Innkeeper’s Song (1993) and Tamsin (1999) were both nominated for the World Fantasy Award. His 2007 novel I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons isn’t as well known as some of his others, but it has its fans. It’s currently ranked at 3.88 (out of 5) at Goodreads, and it has five stars at Amazon.com. Beagle has drummed up a lot of interest in it over the years by reading chapters at various conventions (you can watch him do a public reading of the first chapter here).

I’ve been dying to get my hands on a copy myself. But that’s proven to be fairly tricky because, as it turns out, the book doesn’t exist.

I’m sure this has frustrated more than a few Beagle collectors, because it can take a while to figure this out. Even the Internet Speculative Fiction Database thinks this book exists. And, as far as I know, Amazon and Goodreads aren’t generally in the habit of listing books that don’t exist. But trust me. This ain’t a book.

The closest I’ve come to finding an explanation is this brief note at the bottom of an excerpt from the novel at Green Man Review, quoting a defunct section of Beagle’s website:

The story was originally supposed to be a 40,000 word novella, no longer. But it grew. The first draft came in at more than twice that: nearly 90,000 words… I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons was originally contracted to Firebird Books, and announced for a Summer 2007 release — but completion of the final draft was delayed as the manuscript insisted on growing, and because of time lost to unavoidable family issues, so the book was rescheduled for Summer 2008. Before it could be turned in, however, a serious business conflict came up between Peter and Penguin USA over the 40th Anniversary Edition of The Last Unicorn. This ultimately led Peter to conclude that after many years of association with Penguin imprints it was time to move on. Since Firebird was a Penguin imprint, that meant pulling I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons.

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