Black Gate – Page 819 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

The 2015 Hugo Nominations

Thursday, April 30, 2015 Rich Horton Comments 9 comments

I am I suppose coming a little bit late to the party, but I wanted to join in and express my views on the Sad Puppies/Rabid Puppies slates, and their effect on the Hugos. I will mention up front that of all the points of view I have seen expressed, I am most in sympathy with George R. R. Martin’s … you can read his views at his Not a Blog.

I should add as well that I do have a horse in this race. I am a Hugo nominee again as part of the editorial team for Lightspeed, which was nominated for Best Semiprozine. (We were fortunate enough to win last year, one of my biggest thrills in my time in the field.) I’ll be honest: one of the things that bothers me about this whole kerfuffle is that I’ll be at Sasquan as a nominee, my first time to be at the Hugos in person as a nominee. (I was unable to make it to London last year.) And I can’t help but think that the whole experience will be, certainly not ruined, but marred, by the aftermath of the whole mess. (For example – it would have been pretty darn cool to receive a Hugo from Connie Willis, if we were so lucky!) But you have every right not to care about that – that doesn’t matter at all in reality.

Anyway, here’s a quick summary of my positions:

Bloc voting is wrong. Making recommendations is not wrong. Promoting your own work strikes me as distasteful, but I’m not going to condemn those who do so. Promoting other people’s work is good.

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 171 Now Available

Wednesday, April 29, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I’ve sort of lost count of all the magazines I’m tracking for Black Gate now. It’s like two dozen or something. I dunno. It’s a lot. A lot more than I can read, anyway.

But I wish I could read every issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Scott H. Andrews’ magazine of literary adventure fantasy seems the closest in spirit to the print edition of Black Gate, and I’m certain I’d really enjoy them. Issue 171 contains two new stories by Spencer Ellsworth and Thomas M. Waldroon, a reprint from Rachael Acks, a podcast, and more.

“The Fires of Mercy” by Spencer Ellsworth
The sandstorm had blanketed the world the night before. Sand hung still on the leaves of the palm trees; sand sat on a skim atop the water; sand pillowed against rocks. Grains swept the crevices of palm trees, shone like jewels in the sun.

“Sinseerly A Friend & Yr. Obed’t” by Thomas M. Waldroon
Mr. Stutley Northup is not a magistrate. Why, he’s not even a lawyer. But if people are free to come to him with their controversies, he is just as free to offer his opinion; and if they choose to act on it, well, that’s their own lookout.

Audio Fiction Podcast: “The Fires of Mercy” by Spencer Ellsworth
The assassin, the mother, and the child fled into the desert.

From the Archives: “The Book of Autumn” by Rachael Acks
I made the truth something those duty old men couldn’t ignore.

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Remembering Nepal’s Ancient Cultural Heritage

Wednesday, April 29, 2015 Sean McLachlan Comments 1 comment

Darbar Square, Kathmandu. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons. — Durbar Square (“Palace Square”), Kathmandu. Surrounding these two large temples are a host of palaces and smaller temples and shrines. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

There’s a downside to being well-traveled — any time there’s a disaster overseas it feels close to home. This week’s earthquake in Nepal was another one of those disasters.

I visited Nepal in 1994 at the end of a year-long trip across Asia. I’d been working as an archaeologist in Bulgaria and went overland through Turkey, Syria, Iran, Pakistan, and India to make it finally to Nepal. That trip gave me some of my favorite spots on Earth — Cappadocia, Damascus, Isfahan, Varanasi, and the Himalayas. Like most people who visit Nepal, I went for the trekking. While the view from Annapurna base camp is something I’ll never forget, the people and ancient art and architecture of the Kathmandu valley have also stuck with me after all those years.

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Vintage Bits: The 10 Greatest Dungeons and Dragons Videogames

Wednesday, April 29, 2015 John ONeill Comments 11 comments

Ian Williams at Paste Magazine has posted a fond retrospective of the great years of D&D videogaming, correctly noting the current trend towards retro-dungeon crawls among independent developers.

Everyone’s going old school in their computer roleplaying games these days. Recent games like Grimrock 2, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin, and the steady stream of roguelikes hark back to the golden era of the form, when kobolds were kobolds and the gold coins flowed freely. The biggest, best chunk of those old games came, of course, from the Dungeons & Dragons bloodline.

His list includes most of the great D&D games of my youth, including (of course) Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and the brilliant Pool of Radiance. I was especially pleased to see one of my favorites, Icewind Dale, rank so highly on his list.

Icewind Dale doesn’t have the literary aspirations of its predecessors in the Black Isle catalog. It wants to let you fight waves of monsters and crack open the best parts of the old AD&D 2nd Edition system… Icewind Dale is best viewed as a system first, narrative second, type of game. You make a party from scratch, something you weren’t strictly allowed to do in Baldur’s Gate or Planescape: Torment. And they knew you were going to min-max it. There were no complicated voiceover interactions with your party members, no main character with an intense personal story. Just the cold winds of the North, a simple storyline, and the chance to play murderhobo with the greatest RPG engine the D&D games put out.

See news on the new Enhanced Edition of Icewind Dale here, and enjoy Ian’s complete article here.

Future Treasures: The Hollow Queen by Elizabeth Haydon, Book 8 of The Symphony of Ages

Wednesday, April 29, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The first volume in Elizabeth Haydon’s long-running fantasy series The Symphony of Ages, Rhapsody, was published by Tor Books way back in September, 1999. It was an immediate hit; Publishers Weekly called it “One of the finest high fantasy debuts in years,” and the series quickly became a bestseller.

Over the next 15 years she’s published seven more in the series, mostly recently The Merchant Emperor last June. On May 5th The Merchant Emperor will be reprinted in paperback, and next month Tor releases the eighth installment, The Hollow Queen.

Beset on all sides by the forces of the merchant emperor Talquist, the Cymrian Alliance finds itself in desperate straits. Rhapsody herself has joined the battle, wielding the Daystar Clarion, leaving her True Name in hiding with her infant son. Ashe tries to enlist the aid of the Sea Mages. Within their Citadel of Scholarship lies the White Ivory tower, a spire that could hold the key to unraveling the full extent of Talquist’s machinations. Achmed journeys to the reportedly unassailable palace of Jierna Tal, to kill emperor Talquist–all the while knowing that even if he succeeds, it may not be enough to stop the momentum of the war.

As they struggle to untangle the web of Talquist’s treachery, the leaders of the Cymrian alliance are met with obstacles at every turn. Rhapsody soon realizes that the end of this war will come at an unimaginable price: the lives of those she holds dearest.

The Hollow Queen will be published by Tor Books on June 30, 2015. It is 415 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

The Proxy Culture War for the Soul of Middle Earth

Wednesday, April 29, 2015 Sandy Ryalls Comments 42 comments

The culture war has been going on for a while. We’re used to it played out large. Trying to boil down 50 years of social history and politics into a paragraph is going to lose some nuance but, in broad strokes, you’ve people for whom established mores work, usually from homogenous communities, and people for whom they don’t — who are frequently labeled with various flavors of moral degeneracy. Usually to the scorn of history.

It’s played out in government, often in schools. We’re used to that. But now it’s also playing out in our fandom, our games, our conventions. This year the Hugo Awards took some collateral damage from being a battlefield in a war that is part of that narrative but is also somewhat removed from how we’ve been used to thinking of this fight.

Safe Space and the Geek Social Fallacy

There is a social movement of, largely, white male nerds misusing the concept of safe space to exclude people from geekdom.

Safe space is an area where anyone can be comfortable in who they are without recrimination, without bullying and without threat.

Most of our society isn’t safe. The litany of violence, abuse, and microaggression thrown at people because of fundamental aspects of their person is well documented

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Vintage Treasures: The Silken Magic Books by Elizabeth Gilligan

Tuesday, April 28, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I published Elizabeth Gilligan’s short story “Iron Joan” in Black Gate 3 (read the complete story here), and it was an immediate hit. The tale of an indomitable woman — the daughter of the High Chief of Glen Cluain, shamed by her father’s house but gifted in her mother’s secret arts — who mysteriously leaves home at seventeen to settle in a tiny village, was a powerful story that SF Reader called “A deep, well-written tale. Highly recommended.”

Elizabeth Gilligan seemed to me like a writer destined for great things, and it wasn’t long before I was proven right. He debut novel, Magic’s Silken Snare, the first volume in Silken Magic, was published by DAW in April 2003, and was widely acclaimed. Locus called it an “Opulent tale and court intrigue and dark magics… [An] excellent first novel,” and Romantic Times said “An alternate Sicily is splendidly revealed… [with] robust characterizations, multiple storylines, and clever delivery.” It was followed by the second volume, The Silken Shroud, in April 2004, and it seemed obvious that this was the beginning of a stellar career.

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See the BBC Trailer for Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Tuesday, April 28, 2015 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

Susanna Clarke’s debut novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004) won both the Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award, and became a New York Times bestseller. The BBC announced they were adapting the book as a seven-part series staring Eddie Marsan (Ray Donovan, Filth) as Mr Norrell, and Bertie Carvel (Restless, Matilda) as Jonathan Strange late last year.

The series is set at the beginning of the 19th-century, in an England where public belief in magic has begun to die off. The reclusive Mr Norrell stuns the city of York when he causes the statues of York Cathedral to speak and move. With a little persuasion and help from his man of business Childermass (Enzo Cilenti), he goes to London to help the government in the war against Napoleon. It is there Norrell summons a fairy (Marc Warren) to bring Lady Pole (Alice Englert) back from the dead, a decision that has dark consequences…

The series begins broadcasting on BBC One on May 1st. It will air in Canada on Space, and in the United States on BBC America.

New Treasures: Blackguards: Tales of Assassins, Mercenaries. and Rogues, edited by J.M. Martin

Tuesday, April 28, 2015 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

I first heard about the massive Blackguards anthology, which showcases tales of thieves, rogues and assassins, when Laura Resnick wrote a guest post for us last year, “Living Outside Society’s Rules,” talking about her short story “Friendship,” set in the world of her Silerian trilogy and taking place a few years before the first book, In Legend Born.

I was intrigued… but since then I’ve learned that Blackguards contains stories set in over two dozen fantasy worlds, from writers like Mark Lawrence, Carol Berg, Mark Smylie, Django Wexler, Peter Orullian, and many, many more. This is an unprecedented opportunity to sample some of the most popular and innovative fantasy series on the market today, all in one place. Blackguards was edited by J.M. Martin and published this week by Ragnarok Publications. If you’re at all interested in modern fantasy, this volume is an incredible bargain.

Whether by coin or by blood… YOU WILL PAY.

A fantasy anthology featuring the deadly, the worldly, and the sneaky. Blackguards consists mainly of stories in established series, and the authors range from wildly successful indie authors to New York Times bestsellers. Featuring tales set in the worlds of Michael J. Sullivan’s Riyria, David Dalglish’s Dezrel, Mark Lawrence’s The Broken Empire, Lian Hearn’s Tales of the Otori, Mark Smylie’s Sword and Barrow, Anthony Ryan’s Raven’s Shadow, Shawn Speakman’s Chronicles of Annwn, Carol Berg’s Sanctuary, James A. Moore’s Seven Forges, Django Wexler’s Shadow Campaigns, Laura Resnick’s Silerian Trilogy, Peter Orullian’s Vault of Heaven, Kenny Soward’s GnomeSaga, Paul S. Kemp’s Egil and Nix, and more! If you enjoy roguish tales of scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells, many of them set in established worlds, Blackguards is for you!

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March Short Story Roundup

Tuesday, April 28, 2015 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 4 comments

There are a whole lot of new-to-me goings on out there in the world of magazines and short fiction (see John O’Neill’s recent posts). So much so that I’m a little behind this month trying to catch up. I haven’t gotten to any of Beneath Ceaseless Skies most recent issues yet.

From a swords & sorcery perspective, the biggest — and potentially most interesting — new publication out there is Grimdark Magazine. The first issue, completely unbeknownst to me, appeared last fall. The third issue hit the virtual newsstand on March 25. Like the title says, it’s filled with grim and dark stuff.

The term grimdark, lifted from Warhammer 40K, was originally one of opprobrium for a certain type of fantasy, and was later taken up as a badge of honor by its creators. For those who managed to miss all the talk about the subject a few years back, here’s a quick definition: grimdark fantasy is nihlistic/realistic storytelling that moves the genre forward/destroys the genre, and features characters with realistic motives/who are utterly vile. Whether you like or hate the fiction coming out under the rubric, Grimdark Magazine, by its very nature, is going to feature S&S.

Each issue is packed with original stories, interviews with some of grimdark’s leading lights, and reviews. The magazine has a definite point of view as stated by editor Adrian Collins in the first issue:

Grimdark Magazine started out as the identification of a gap in the niche ezine market coupled with an obsession with grim stories told in a dark world by morally ambiguous protagonists.

As far as I’m concerned, grimdark is just another marketing term, like splatterpunk was for supposedly extra-bloody horror back in the mid-1980s. As much as some writers and fans have claimed that grimdark is both about introducing more realism as well as being a revolt against black-and-white morality that they say saturates much fantasy, I don’t think it’s all that different from lots of what’s gone before (just check out any of Karl Edward Wagner or Michael Moorcock’s fantasies).

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