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The nominations for the David Gemmell Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel of 2014 have been announced by the DGLA. Simultaneously, the DGLA has also announced the nominees for The Morningstar Award for Best Debut Novel, and The Ravenheart Award for Best Fantasy Cover Art. May we have the envelope please!
The Iraqis we see in the news almost always fall into three types–The Evil Fundamentalist, The Useless Official, and The Wailing Victim. The media have a hard time dealing with a broad range of characters, so they tend to fall back on these types again and again.
Of course the reality is more complex. While there’s no shortage of bloodshed and corruption, most of Iraq’s 33 million people go about their day-to-day affairs trying to live a normal life.
Back in 2012 I traveled to Iraq to write about it for the now-moribund travel blog Gadling. Click the link to read the series. Sadly, the photo galleries have been taken offline, but you can still read the articles for the moment.
Paula Guran edits The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror every year, and her most recent anthology was Blood Sisters, packed full of vampire stories by women. So it’s good to see her deliver something outside the horror genre… or, perhaps, it’s good to see her keen eye for dark fantasy brought to bear on a subgenre that’s usually associated with The Little Mermaid.
In Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep, Paula has assembled a wide range of fiction by Tanith Lee, Peter S. Beagle, Samuel R. Delany, Neil Gaiman, Delia Sherman, Gene Wolfe, and others. Here’s a brief snippet from her introduction:
Powerful and incomprehensible, the oceans were thought to be the home of many monstrous creatures — sea serpents and dragons; the Norse Kraken, Greek Charybdis, Japanese Isonade, Biblical Leviathan. Rivers have monsters, too, like the Yacumama of the Amazon River or the malevolent zin, who live in the Niger River. As for lakes, even if you’ve never heard of the Welsh afanc, you know the Scottish Loch Ness monster.
The waters of the world were also believed to contain mythological creatures whose behaviors were as inconstant as our feelings about the mysteries of the deep. As Jane Yolen has said, “It is the allure of the beautiful, unattainable, mysterious Other. In every culture in every clime, there are stories of such creatures in the oceans, rivers, ponds, wells. Water is such a mutable, magical substance itself, the human imagination simply cannot believe it’s not peopled as the earth is. We want there to be such underwater civilizations and — not finding them — we invent them and then turn around and believe in our own invention.”
I’ve written about Venture before, a short-lived companion to F&SF, first in the late ’50s, then again in the late ’60s to early ’70s. It tried to be a bit more adventure-oriented, and also (at least in its first incarnation) seemed to try to have a sexier image.
The feature list is pretty thin – most significant is the first book review column by Theodore Sturgeon, whom the editor proudly introduces as “the discoverer and distinguished proponent of that basic maxim known as “Sturgeon’s Law.” He reviews only one book, Martin Greenberg’s collection of non-fiction of SF interest, Coming Attractions. The inside back cover has a feature called “Venturing,” short bio-ish pieces about a few of the issue’s authors (Sturgeon, James Gunn, and “Paul Janvier”). The cover is by Ed Emshwiller (in my opinion, not one of his better efforts), and the interior art is by John Giunta and by Cindy Smith.
The stories are:
“Not So Great an Enemy,” by James E. Gunn (17,500 words)
“And Then She Found Him,” by Paul Janvier (6,900 words)
“Aces Loaded,” by Theodore R. Cogswell (6,500 words)
“The Keeper,” by H. Beam Piper (8,700 words)
“The Education of Tigress McCardle,” by C. M. Kornbluth (3,700 words)
“Seat of Judgment,” by Lester Del Rey (7,700 words)
“The Harvest,” by Tom Godwin (800 words)
Last week I purchased a small collection of vintage paperbacks (something I do a lot). I bought it chiefly because it was inexpensive, all the books were in terrific shape… and it had a Michael Moorcock paperback I’d never seen before.
The Moorcock was The Black Corridor, an Ace Science Fiction Special, written in collaboration with Moorcock’s then-wife, Hilary Bailey (author of Frankenstein’s Bride and Fifty-First State.) The Ace Science Fiction Specials are highly prized by readers and collectors alike. They were edited by Terry Carr, and included first editions of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, Alexei Panshin’s Rite of Passage, John Brunner’s The Jagged Orbit and The Traveler in Black, and William Gibson’s Neuromancer, among many others.
The Black Corridor is something of an odd bird. It wasn’t as successful or acclaimed as many of the other Ace Specials, and in fact it has never been reprinted in paperback in the US. But it does have its admirers. It was cited by Karl Edward Wagner as one of the thirteen best science-fiction horror novels, and Harlan Ellison said “Saying I enjoyed this book would be damning with faint praise… I was surprised by this book, at least eleven times.” Although it was never reprinted in paperback in the US, it was included as part of the omnibus collection Sailing to Utopia, The Tale of the Eternal Champion #5, published by Millennium (UK) and White Wolf (US), alongside The Ice Schooner, The Distant Suns, and the novelette “Flux.”
The Black Corridor is based on an incomplete fragment of a thriller written by Bailey, which Moorcock called “a straight future disaster story – collapse of society stuff.” Moorcock substantially re-drafted it, setting the bulk of the book in interstellar space, to tell a tale of an Earth collapsing into anarchy and war, and the starship and crew that flee into space. The book is fairly experimental, even for Moorcock. It contains sequences of typographical art where, as Moorcock put it, “words create a pattern of other letters forming other words,” and the narrative is enhanced with entries for the spaceship’s log, dream sequences, and computer printouts straight out of the 1960s.
The Black Corridor was published by Ace Books in 1969. It is 187 pages, priced at 75 cents. The cover is by Leo Dillon and Diane Dillon. There is no digital edition.
Black Gate blogger Sarah Avery has been nominated for the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for her novel Tales from Rugosa Coven, published in 2013 by Dark Quest.
The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, series, or collection for adults published during the previous year that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings,” the Oxford literary discussion group that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The winners will be announced during Mythcon 46, held July 31 – August 3, 2015, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Congratulations to Sarah, and all the nominees!
Sarah’s short story “The War of the Wheat Berry Year,” a slender and deceptively simple fantasy featuring The Traitor of Imlen, was published in Black Gate 15. The complete list of nominees for the 2015 Mythopoeic Awards follows.
Issue 40 of Curtis Ellett’s Swords and Sorcery Magazine, cover-dated May 2015, was published this week. Each issue of Swords and Sorcery contains two short stories, and is available free online. This issue includes new fiction from Christopher Mowder and Anna Sykora, and a discussion of Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser by Fritz Leiber (strangely called “Fritz Lieber” in the intro) by Rick Hudson.
“The Goblin’s Son,” by Christopher Mowder, is the story of a goblin father who must deal with his son going off to war and serving beside old enemies to help create a peace. This is Mowder’s first published short story.
“How Pawla Stole the River Livvy,” by Anna Sykora, is an ecological fable and a delightful fantasy. A wild creature helps a village of humans drive off invaders who threaten their homes. Sykora is a prolific writer who has published over a hundred stories and many poems. This is her first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.
“Back in Lankhmar Again,” by Rick Hudson, is a discussion of the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories by Fritz Lieber (sic). Hudson is a noted writer of literary fiction, a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University. His essay “Return to Hyboria” and story “Wraith-Raker” have recently appeared in Swords & Sorcery.
Read the current issue here.
Swords and Sorcery Magazine is edited by Curtis Ellett, and is available free online. Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed issue #40 in his May Short Story Roundup. See our June Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.
Peter V. Brett’s second novel in the Demon Cycle, The Desert Spear, became an international bestseller, and the next two books in the series made him one of the top-selling authors on the market. So it’s no surprise that The Great Bazaar and Brayan’s Gold, two limited edition novellas from P.S. Publishing, set in the world of the Demon Cycle, and detailing Arlen’s early adventures, have been sold out for years.
Now Tachyon Publications is releasing an omnibus collection of both novellas in a handsome and affordable trade paperback edition. It something no fan of Peter V. Brett will want to miss.
From the dangerous world of the Demon Cycle comes the early adventures of Arlen, Peter V. Brett’s quintessential fantasy hero. These exciting origin tales follow Arlen as he learns to navigate a world where the elemental forces of evil conjure themselves from the earth each night.
Humanity has barely survived a demonic onslaught by using magical wards that protect their cities and homes. Only a handful of mercenaries and explorers risk traveling after the sun sets. Arlen, seeking adventure and fortune, is barely protected by the warded armor upon which he has inscribed intricate defensive runes. From a journey ferrying a wagonload of dynamite to a mountain stronghold, to a dangerous mission to recover desert treasures, Arlen faces friends and enemies with a strong arm and a cunning wit.
We’ve previously covered Peter’s novels The Daylight War and The Skull Throne.
The Great Bazaar & Brayan’s Gold will be published by Tachyon Publications on July 14, 2015. It is 186 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback. There is no digital edition. Cover by Elizabeth Story.
Although the release date is Wednesday, S.M. Stirling’s new anthology of stories in the Emberverse is now for sale on Amazon.
You can purchase it here.
ALL-NEW STORIES OF THE EMBERVERSE
by S.M. Stirling, Harry Turtledove, Walter Jon Williams, John Birmingham, John Barnes, Jane Lindskold, and more…
“[A] vivid portrait of a world gone insane,”* S. M. Stirling’s New York Times bestselling Novels of the Change have depicted a vivid, utterly persuasive, and absorbingly unpredictable postapocalyptic wasteland in which all modern technology has been left in ashes, forcing humankind to rebuild an unknowable new world in the wake of unimaginable — and deliberate — chaos.
Now, in this startling new anthology, S. M. Stirling invites the most fertile minds in science fiction to join him in expanding his rich Emberverse canvas. Here are inventive new perspectives on the cultures, the survivors, and the battles arising across the years and across the globe following the Change.
In his all-new story Hot Night at the Hopping Toad, Stirling returns to his own continuing saga of the High Kingdom of Montival. In the accompanying stories are fortune seekers, voyagers, and dangers — from the ruins of Sydney to the Republic of Fargo and Northern Alberta to Venetian and Greek galleys clashing in the Mediterranean.
With the height of the “Harry Potter phenomenon” nearly a decade past, we now have a new generation of seven- and eight-year-olds who were born after the final book in that series came out. A perennial question comes up: What will be the next “gateway” work that ushers young readers into a lifelong love of fantasy and speculative fiction?
Well, some may rightly ask, why can’t it be Harry Potter? Or A Wrinkle in Time, or The Dark is Rising sequence, or The Chronicles of Prydain, or The Chronicles of Narnia, or The Hobbit, or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, or…?
Many do still find their first taste of enchantment in books that are decades or even a century old, but there is no denying that — at least in the publishing and bookselling world — there has to be a “latest model.” Librarians still push those beloved older books faithfully, but their sales pitch is a lot stronger when it comes as a follow-up to a young reader who, having just read something that is currently “all the rage,” asks, “What else out there is like this?”
I’m here today to suggest that if you want a contemporary work that will introduce 3rd to 7th graders to the pleasures of epic fantasy, steampunk, people with animal heads, and wise-cracking robots, you could do a lot worse than hand them the graphic novel Amulet Book One: The Stonekeeper (2008) by Kazu Kibuishi. But be prepared: odds are good that they will immediately be demanding books 2 through 6. And then they will be waiting with bated breath for book 7 and cursing that there is now a two-year interval between volumes (welcome, Young Reader, to the Pains of Following a Series that is Ongoing. To better understand what you are in for, see any conversations referencing George R.R. Martin or Patrick Rothfuss).
But I’m also here to recommend them to anyone who likes this sort of stuff, regardless your age. I mentioned “3rd to 7th graders” in the last paragraph because those are the perimeters the publisher, Scholastic, says they are written toward. As someone who does not fit that demographic, I can vouch for them being worthwhile reads even if you are middle-aged.