Black Gate – Page 815 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: The Daedalus Series by Michael J Martinez

Sunday, May 10, 2015 John ONeill Comments 9 comments

I overlooked Michael J. Martinez’s The Daedalus Incident, the opening volume of The Daedalus Series, when it first appeared in 2013. That turned out to be a mistake. By the time The Enceladus Crisis arrived last May, it was clear that this was a major new science fantasy series. Tor. com called it “adventurous, original, and a blast to read,” and GeekDad summed up the second volume splendidly:

Wooden sailing ships battling it out in space, Earth astronauts discovering an ancient alien temple on one of Saturn’s moons, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, undead French soldiers, Venusian jungles, and corporate espionage… This isn’t steampunk, okay? This is something new and unique and completely entertaining.

The third volume — featuring undead soldiers, Royal Navy frigates sailing the Void between worlds, dark alchemy, alien slave trade, and extra-dimensional incursions — was published last week, bringing the story to a climax deep in the jungles of Venus. It’s hard for me to keep up with everything that crosses my desk these days, but I think I might just have to make time for this entire series. The Venusian Gambit was published by Night Shade Books on May 5, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $10.99 for the digital version.

Goodbye, Innsmouth Magazine

Sunday, May 10, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I was dismayed to find, as I was cataloging our recent magazine coverage for the Late April Magazine Rack, that the delightful digital horror zine Innsmouth Magazine, published by Innsmouth Free Press, released its final issue last summer.

In a post titled “Goodbye, Innsmouth Magazine,” the editors offered a brief explanation:

Well, it had to happen sometime. Innsmouth Magazine says a fond farewell with its final issue, number 15, this spring. We’ve had fun putting together this little zine, but don’t make enough sales to keep it afloat. So, it must go.

It’s always a sad milestone when the field loses another fine magazine. The good news is that Innsmouth Free Press continues, and has recently produced some terrific books, including Jazz Age Cthulhu by Jennifer Brozek, A.D. Cahill, and Orrin Grey, and the anthology Sword & Mythos, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles. The final issue of the magazine, #15, is still worth your attention, and contains plenty of good stuff:

Innsmouth Magazine uncoils its tentacles with seven stories of the Weird and the macabre. Do you dare to stay in “The Peach Room”? Can you survive “The Lust of Ebon Teeth”? Could it be true that “The Ocean is Eating Our Graves”? Fiction by William Meikle and many others. Welcome to our final issue!

Innsmouth Magazine was edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles, and available exclusively in digital format for $4/issue. We last covered Innsmouth Magazine with issue #4. You can still purchase back issues through Amazon, Smashwords, Weightless Books, or right at their website.

Vintage Treasures: Crompton Divided by Robert Sheckley

Sunday, May 10, 2015 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005) was primarily a science fiction writer, producing hundreds of short stories and roughly two dozen novels, including The Status Civilization (1960), The 10th Victim (1966), and Dimension of Miracles (1968). From time to time, however, he turned his hand to fantasy, as in a trio of comic fantasies written with Roger Zelazny, Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming (1991), If at Faust You Don’t Succeed (1993), and A Farce to Be Reckoned With (1995).

In Crompton Divided (1978), published in the UK as The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton, Sheckley stepped into Philip K Dick territory. Alastair Crompton is diagnosed with virus schizophrenia in his youth, and two dangerous aspects of his personality are medically separated from him and allowed to grow and develop on their own: the self-indulgent Loomis, who embodies all of Crompton’s lust, and the dangerously violent Stack, who got all of his rage. When he reaches adulthood the mild Crompton, despite the fact that he is repulsed by them, sets out on a Jungian quest to re-integrate his personalities and become a whole person.

The bizarre case of Alistair Crompton

He is a tortured soul. Separated at an early age from two conflicting personalities, Alistair Crompton has hatched a daring scheme to reintegrate himself. Installed in different host bodies and dispatched to distant planets, the two other Alistairs have developed lives of their own: Loomis — as grossly self-indulgent and amoral as Alistair is moderate and prim. Stack — as vicious and impulsive as Alistair is meek and cautious. What happens when the original Alistair reengages himself first with Loomis, then with Stack? Discover for yourself in this odyssey by one of the grand masters of science fiction. It’s mind-bending.

Crompton Divided is an expanded version of the novella “Join Now,” originally published in the December 1958 issue of Galaxy. It was published by Bantam Books in November 1979. It is 182 pages, priced at $1.95. I bought an unread copy online for about 50 cents earlier this month. The cover is by Paul Lehr.

A World With Larger Teeth and Sharper Claws: Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh, the First Great Serialized Novel of 2015

Sunday, May 10, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Back in January I told you about Nigh, Book One, the first installment in a terrific new serialized fantasy novel from Marie Bilodeau, the author of the Heirs of a Broken Land trilogy. New chapters have arrived every month since, and there are now four full installments available. The most recent, Nigh Book Four, shot up the Amazon bestseller charts the week of its release, and has been getting some great press. Here’s the description:

With the hopes of the faerie realm turned to dust, Alva Viola Taverner and Hector Henry Featherson strike the final blow to the veil between worlds, shattering it and returning them to the human realm. But one hundred years has passed for humanity, and things have changed. The world awaiting them now bears larger teeth and sharper claws, and it hungers for much more than their lives.

Marie’s space fantasy Destiny’s Blood was nominated for the Aurora Award, and she blogs here at Black Gate every second Friday. Nigh, Book 4 was published on May 7 by S&G Publishing. It is 57 pages, priced at 99 cents. It’s available at Amazon.com, B&N.com, and other fine digital bookstores.

Want to Break Into Comics?

Saturday, May 9, 2015 Derek Kunsken Comments 0 Comment

If you want to break into the big comic publishers, a bit of internet research, or visiting a local comic-con will reveal the accepted wisdom pretty quickly:

If you’re an artist, show your portfolio to editors at a con, or establish an online portfolio and email the editors. There’s lots of advice in different places about breaking in as an artist, and lots of places to learn (the comicsexperience.com podcast seems to me to be a great place to start).
If you’re a writer, pair up with an artist, make a comic, sell to the smaller comic presses to show your abilities and then approach bigger publishers, who, of course, offer a bit more money.

There isn’t really an advertised direct route in for writers either way. The submission guidelines at DC are pretty clear that they’re only looking for artists.

Marvel does let on that they’re looking for writers and artists, but mostly through the process laid out above.

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Clarkesworld 104 Now on Sale

Saturday, May 9, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

The newest issue of Clarkesworld, one of the best genre mags on the market, is now on sale. Issue 104 contains five new short stories, plus reprints from James Van Pelt and Hannu Rajaniemi.

Short stories featured this issue are:

“The Garden Beyond Her Infinite Skies” by Matthew Kressel
“For the Love of Sylvia City” by Andrea M. Pawley
“Mrs. Griffin Prepares to Commit Suicide Tonight” by A Que, translated by John Chu
“Ossuary” by Ian Muneshwar
“An Evolutionary Myth” by Bo-Young Kim
“Solace” by James Van Pelt (from Analog, June 2009)
“Tyche and the Ants” by Hannu Rajaniemi (from Edge of Infinity, Nov 2012)

Non-fiction includes “Destination: Mars” by Andrew Liptak, who’s also been writing a fine series of pulp and classic SF retrospectives SF at Kirkus Reviews over the last few months (see a partial list here); “Another Word: It’s Good to Be Lazy and Foolish” by SF author Ken Liu; an interview with author and editor Cat Rambo; and an editorial, “Overload!” by Neil Clarke, in which he talks about (among other things) his upcoming Year’s Best Anthology: The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 1, to be published “sometime in 2016” by Night Shade Books. This issue also includes two podcasts.

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The March of the 10,000

Friday, May 8, 2015 Comments 3 comments

WeberRingoMarchUpCountry — The mercenaries that became heroes. The heroes that became a trope.

Holy ****! Scythed chariots!!! — *Holy Cow!* Actual scythed chariots.

The mercenaries that became heroes.

The heroes that became a trope.

401 BCE and Cyrus the Younger draws up his rebel army on the banks of the River Euphrates near Cunaxa.

We’re in what will be modern Iraq, deep inside the Persian Empire. Even so, the right flank belongs to 10,000 Greek mercenaries, mostly heavily armoured hoplites and veterans of both sides of the brutal Peloponnesian War.

At midday, a white cloud of dust rises over the the horizon, a cloud so vast that it casts a shadow on the plain. At last, the sun flashes on bronze spear points and the army of King Artaxerxes trundles into view; 40,000 men drawn from the reaches of the empire… heavy infantry, archers, exotic skirmishers, armoured cavalry… oh and — Holy Cow! — actual scythed chariots.

Chanting their paen, rattling spear on shield, the Greeks dress their ranks and march into action…

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Future Treasures: Storm and Steel by Jon Sprunk

Friday, May 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Storm and Steel, the long-awaited sequel to Blood and Iron — which Sarah Avery said “takes the prize for strange worldbuilding… full of powerful imagery and a vivid sense of place,” will be released in just a few weeks. Jon Sprunk is also the author of the popular Shadow Saga (Shadow’s Son, Shadow’s Lure, Shadow’s Master), and expectations are running high for the second volume of his new trilogy, The Book of the Black Earth.

An empire at war. Three fates intertwined.

The Magician. Horace has destroyed the Temple of the Sun, but now he finds his slave chains have been replaced by bonds of honor, duty, and love. Caught between two women and two cultures, he must contend with deadly forces from the unseen world.

The Rebel. Jirom has thrown in his lot with the slave uprising, but his road to freedom becomes ever more dangerous as the rebels expand their campaign against the empire. Even worse, he feels his connection with Emanon slipping away with every blow they strike in the name of freedom. The Spy. Alyra has severed her ties to the underground network that brought her to Akeshia, but she continues the mission on her own. Yet, with Horace’s connection to the queen and the rebellion’s escalation of violence, she finds herself treading a knife’s edge between love and duty.

Dark conspiracies bubble to the surface as war and zealotry spread across the empire. Old alliances are shattered, new vendettas are born, and all peoples — citizen and slave alike — must endure the ravages of storm and steel.

Storm and Steel will be published by Pyr on June 2, 2015. It is 479 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Jason Chan. Learn more at Pyr Books or read our exclusive excerpt of the first novel here.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in April

Friday, May 8, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Looking over our traffic stats for last month, I want to give a shout-out to M Harold Page, who managed to heroically crack the Top 10 without once mentioning the Hugo Awards or Rabid Puppies. Well done, Mr. Page!

He was the only one to accomplish that extraordinary feat, however. Every other article in the Top 10 for April (and more than a few in the Top 25) directly addressed the ongoing Hugo Awards controversy, which began on April 4th when Worldcon announced the nominees for the 2015 Hugo Awards — a group which usually represents the finest science fiction and fantasy of the year, but this year was largely dictated by a single individual, Vox Day (Theo Beale), and his Rabid Puppy supporters, who crammed the slate with 11 nominees from Theo’s tiny publishing house, Castalia House, and nominated Vox Day personally for two Hugo Awards.

Not coincidentally, Black Gate received the first Hugo nomination in our history, and one of our bloggers, Matthew David Surridge, was nominated for Best Fan Writer, both as a direct result of being included on the Rabid Puppy slate. We declined those nominations, for reasons that I think should be fairly obvious.

The most popular article on the BG blog last month — indeed, one of the most popular posts in our history — was Matthew’s “A Detailed Explanation,” in which he analyzed the extraordinary events around this year’s Hugo nominations, and enumerated the reasons why he declined science fiction’s highest honor. It the few weeks since it has been posted, it has been read over 50,000 times.

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Knock, Knock: Or, The Portal Fantasy Revisited

Friday, May 8, 2015 Violette Malan Comments 2 comments

This week I participated in a Mild Meld over on SFSignal on the theme of portal fantasies. I’m not the only person who did, and you can see the whole post here, but, as is so often the case when you’re asked to consider an intriguing idea, I’m still thinking about it. Warning: For the sake of clarity I repeat some of my SFSignal observations, but I don’t overlap much.

Working on that post, and thinking about classic portal fantasies such as the The Wizard of Oz or the The Chronicles of Narnia, or the more recent Chronicles of Thomas Covenant (though even they aren’t particularly “recent,” are they?) got me wondering about the evolution of the portal fantasy over the last 35 years.

Let me review the classic version: Human beings from our world find an entrance to a secondary world where magic works, the supernatural exists, etc., and adventures are undertaken. Often there’s a kind “quest” element involved as well, in that the protagonists have to complete a task in order to be able to return to our world. These are often called “primary world fantasies” even though most or all of the action takes place in the other world.

Again, in the classic version of the portal fantasy, the reader is riding the shoulder of the protagonist, seeing and learning everything about the new world at the same time the protagonist does. CS Lewis even introduced new protagonists, so that he could keep explaining things in later books without seeming repetitious. Of course we all recognize this as a use of the stranger-in-a-strange-land trope (SISL), which is invariably interdependent with the portal trope.

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