Black Gate – Page 830 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: What Story Should You Read First?

Monday, April 6, 2015 Bob Byrne Comments 7 comments

FirstStory_LionsMane — One of my favorites: Frederic Dorr Steele for The Lion’s Mane

Recently a post in a Holmes Facebook group caught my eye. A woman was a fan of one of the current TV shows (I don’t recall if it was Elementary or BBC’s Sherlock), but she loved it and wanted to read the stories. She wondered where to start.

First, I think it’s a bit interesting that there are Holmes fans that have never read Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. They only know the detective through television shows set in the modern day. I suppose this also happened a bit with the first Robert Downey Jr. movie, but that had a shorter shelf life. Anyhoo…

There’s a bit of a divide in the Holmes community these days between the ‘old school’ and the newer generation. One characterization is between those who study the stories and those who write speculative fan fiction that has little to no relationship with Doyle’s actual writings. To some extent, there’s always been an old guard/new fans distinction, but social media has exploded it.

While I’ve long been a fan of Holmes pastiches and enjoy most movies and films, I do look askance at all the doey-eyed swooning over Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes. And they’ll pry my calabash pipe from my cold, dead hands before I recognize merit in this Sherlock Meta stuff.

But moving off the grumpy old man ruminations, the question the woman asked was a good one. The initial responses seemed to go with the standard ‘read them in the order they were written.’ That’s logical. But I don’t think it’s the best way to go.

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Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois

Sunday, April 5, 2015 John ONeill Comments 8 comments

There are roughly ten Year’s Best volumes currently being published in the speculative fiction market, but they all bow before Gardner Dozois’ The Year’s Best Science Fiction. The Thirty-Second volume in this venerable series will be published in July.

Now, believe it or not, there were Year’s Best series before Gardner. Everett F Bleiler and T.E Dikty edited the first volume of The Best Science Fiction Stories way back in 1949 (I know, right? Who knew there was good science fiction in those days!) Judith Merril edited twelve volumes of The Year’s Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy (1956-1967), while Donald Wollheim, Terry Carr, Lin Carter, Arthur Saha, Harry Harrison and Brian Aldis, and Lester del Rey all tried their hand at it for a while, with varying success. Gardner Dozois edited the Del Rey series, taking over from Lester del Rey, from 1977-81, until starting over again with The Year’s Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection in 1984 (There’s a nice summary of all this history in Scott Laz’s review of that very first volume here.)

Gardner’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction was exceptional right from the very beginning. For one thing, most prior books — even market leaders like Terry Carr’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year — were slender paperback originals. With his first volume Gardner delivered a massive 575-page hardcover, packed with 25 stories — including a couple of novellas, like Dan Simmons’ knockout “Carrion Comfort.”

He also began what quickly became one of the most-read columns in the entire industry: his lengthy, frank, and often highly opinionated annual summation, covering news, magazines, anthologies, movies, deaths, awards, the birth and growth of fan websites, podcasts, and much more. His first one in 1984 was a thin 17 pages, but over the decades Gardner’s comprehensive report card on the field grew to nearly 100 pages. I, for one, read them cover-to-cover.

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Self-published Book Reviews: The Severed Oath by Andrew J. Luther

Sunday, April 5, 2015 Donald Crankshaw Comments 0 Comment

If you have a book you’d like me to review, please see the submission guidelines here.

The Severed Oath is the second book of The Undying Empire series by Andrew J. Luther, of which three novels are now available. However, the three work as standalone novels, so I’m only reviewing The Severed Oath here.

Leyndra is a Guild-trained Warden, a bodyguard given mystical abilities in order to protect her ward. She works for the nobleman Osho, a successful businessman for whom she has a high regard. Despite Osho’s wife’s, Tyina’s, suspicions, there is nothing romantic about their relationship—Leyndra is a professional, and her affection for Osho is, at most, sisterly.

Leyndra’s situation is contentious, but safe, until someone sends shadows to attack Osho in his sleep. Despite Leyndra’s skill and powers, she is tricked into seeing shadows where Osho stands, and it is her sword that ends his life. She is immediately branded as an Oathbreaker as the magic of the Guild marks her face, and hauled off to prison, first by the Watch, and then by the Imperial Guard. Planted evidence confirms her guilt, though she tells the true story even under torture. Even if the Emperor believed her innocent, the only ones in the city of Ythis capable of such magic are the sorcerous Five or the church of the mad god, and the Emperor does not dare confront either of them directly. So Leyndra is sentenced to be executed.

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Black Gate Nominated for a Hugo Award in a Terrible Ballot

Sunday, April 5, 2015 John ONeill Comments 127 comments

The nominees for the 2015 Hugo Awards have been announced by Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, and let’s be blunt: it’s a terrible ballot.

Here’s a brief recap: over the last few years a number of writers (primarily conservative Americans) have become increasingly convinced that the growing number of women and non-white authors winning Hugo Awards is somehow evidence that the awards have been ‘hijacked’ by a minority group of voters and social justice warriors (SJWs). Their concerns are succinctly summarized at the right-wing new site Breitbart.com.

To make a point about how the awards are influenced by what they perceive as a small group of liberal elites, a handful of authors created a slate of nominees heavily dominated by conservative writers, and asked their followers to support those slates in their entirety. The primary slates were Brad Torgersen’s Sad Puppies 3 and Vox Day’s Rabid Puppies list.

Under cover of this semi-political movement, which added roughly 200 additional nominating ballots to last year’s total (and nearly 800 to the 2013 total), at least one of the organizers heavily seeded his slate with his own works. Vox Day’s Rapid Puppies ballot included no less than ten nominees for his Castalia House publishing company, and listed himself for both Best Editor (Short Form) and Best Editor (Long Form).

The results? As tabulated by Mike Glyer over at File 770, a total of 61 final ballot nominees from Sad Puppies 3 and Rabid Puppies made the final list of nominees. Only 24 nominees did not come from either list.

In short, the Hugo ballot this year was essentially dictated by two individuals who asked their followers to vote for their suggested candidates, regardless of what they actually thought was deserving.

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A Gemmel-esque Adventure in a World of Sand: Hugo Nominee Timothy C. Ward’s Scavenger: Evolution

Saturday, April 4, 2015 Comments 0 Comment

Tim Ward, along with the rest of the Adventures in SciFi Publishing podcast team, just got a Hugo Nomination for best Fancast.

Like his colleagues, he’s not just a fan, he’s a writer. Just in case you were wondering, How good? here’s a quick review of his debut novel Scavenger: Evolution: (Sand Divers, Book One).

First, let’s get something out of the way — we don’t want a sad-pandas-at-the-Black-Gate-gate!

Tim and I have been friends since he interviewed me. We chat online from time to time. We beta-read each other’s material — he’s saved me from handing in a duff manuscript at least twice! — and both belong to that community of aspiring authors breaking into, or just starting to get established in, the profession.

However, part of the reason we’re friends is mutual professional respect. I like his work. Here’s why.

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A Detailed Explanation

Saturday, April 4, 2015 Matthew David Surridge Comments 133 comments

This is going to come out at some point, so I might as well say it here and now: I declined a Hugo nomination for this year’s Best Fan Writer award. I think it’s only fair to the people who voted for me to say why. Be warned, this is going to take a while. (And long-time readers of mine around these parts know that coming from me, that really means something.)

Firstly, given the nature of this post and the scrutiny that surrounds a major award, I should probably introduce myself. Hi. I’m Matthew David Surridge, a Montreal-area writer. I had a couple of longish short stories published a few years ago, one in the paper version of Black Gate and one at Beneath Ceaseless Skies. I’ve been fighting some minor but debilitating illnesses for a while which have kept me from writing fiction, but luckily reading and thinking about books is still within my power, and so I’ve been blogging here at Blackgate.com since 2010.

I mostly write about books I’ve recently enjoyed. In 2014, that included posts about surrealist Leonora Carrington’s The Hearing Trumpet, Elizabeth Hand’s Bride of Frankenstein tie-in novel Pandora’s Bride, a collection of short stories by Violet Paget AKA Vernon Lee, Amos Tutuola’s The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, the medieval tales in the Gesta Romanorum, Mary Gentle’s The Black Opera, Stella Gemmell’s The City, V.E. Schwab’s Vicious, Olga Slavnikova’s 2017, Jan Morris’ wonderful Hav, Phyllis Ann Karr’s Wildraith’s Last Battle, Steven Bauer’s Satyrday, the Harlan Ellison–edited shared-world anthology Medea, Pat Murphy’s three ‘Max Merriwell’ novels (There And Back Again, Wild Angel, and Adventures in Time and Space With Max Merriwell), Sylvia Townsend Warner’s debut novel Lolly Willowes, E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros and Zimiamvia trilogy, and Patricia A. McKillip’s The Changeling Sea. I also often write about comics, and last year I discussed the Steve Ditko/Wally Wood/Paul Levitz run of Stalker from the 1970s; the first volume of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Hugo-winning Saga; Alan Moore, Antony Johnston, and Facundo Percio’s Fashion Beast; and Sage Stossel’s Starling.

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Vengeful Specters, Vampires, and Monster Worms: Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson

Saturday, April 4, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Wordsworth’s Tales of Mystery And The Supernatural volumes (or, as we like to call them, TOMAToS) have been a virtual graduate course in British horror for me, introducing me to a host of classic Nineteenth and Twentieth Century ghost story and supernatural fiction writers. But I have to admit I was a little relieved to come across Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E.F. Benson, since at least I’ve heard of E.F. Benson.

Benson (July 24, 1867 – February 29, 1940) was an English archaeologist and novelist who published over 60 novels between 1883 and 1934. Today he is chiefly remembered for his ghost stories, collected in The Room in the Tower and Other Stories (1912), Visible and Invisible (1923), The Horror Horn (1923), Spook Stories (1928), and Old London (1937), among others.

Unlike many of the subjects of the Wordsworth collections — who’ve been sadly neglected by modern readers — Benson is still fondly remembered. His work has seen many modern collections, including the Panther edition of The Horror Horn (1974), Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991), The Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson (1992), Fine Feathers and Other Stories (1994), and the five-volume The Collected Spook Stories from Ash-Tree Press (1998 – 2005), which collects all of his supernatural fiction.

H.P. Lovecraft thought highly of Benson’s work, especially “The Horror-Horn,” “The Man Who Went Too Far,” and “The Face,” calling him an important contributor to the weird short story. If you’re interested in a nice one-volume introduction to his work Night Terrors is an excellent option. It collects 54 of his best-known stories, and an introduction by David Stuart Davies, in a handsome and economical 718-page paperback.

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Interzone #257 Now on Sale

Saturday, April 4, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Interzone has an interesting approach to cover art. It commissions a single artist to do its covers for a full year. The 2015 cover artist is Martin Hanford, and so far I’ve really been enjoying his work. This issue has an intriguing sword & sorcery feel… although the central figure is in a space suit and strapped to a duck, which is admittedly a fresh theme for S&S (or any other genre I’m familiar with). Click the image at right for a closer look. We’ve showcased Martin’s work at Black Gate previously, most recently on the cover of Swords of Steel.

Interzone is the sister magazine of Black Static, both are published by TTA Press in the UK. The distinguished Andy Cox is the editor of both.

Interzone contains chiefly science fiction but, like Asimov’s SF here in the states, does publish the occasional fantasy piece. Issue #257 is cover-dated March/April, and contains the following fiction:

“A Murmuration” by Alastair Reynolds
“Songbird” by Fadzlishah Johanabas
“Brainwhales Are Stoners, Too” by Rich Larson
“The Worshipful Company of Milliners” by Tendai Huchu
“Blossoms Falling Down” by Aliya Whiteley

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Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1952: A Retro-Review

Friday, April 3, 2015 Matthew Wuertz Comments 9 comments

This is an issue I had looked forward to for a long time. One of my first steps toward reading Galaxy was listening to an X-Minus One radio broadcast titled “Surface Tension,” based on the story with the same title by James Blish in Galaxy’s August, 1952 issue. My wife had gotten this one for me early on, but I hadn’t made my way to it until now.

“Surface Tension” by James Blish — Humans explore the galaxy, seeding adaptations of themselves on any Earth-like planets. Hydrot is all water and marshes, and the crew of La Ventura has only a short time before they die, stranded because their ship wrecked. So they create microscopic versions of themselves (but not with their memories) that can survive in water, hoping they can compete for survival without dominating the other lifeforms on the planet.

This was considerably different from what I remember of the radio broadcast. But it’s a well-told story that’s highly inventive.

“Proof of the Pudding” by Robert Sheckley — One man survives the final war on Earth by taking a ship into space. He returns to the desolate planet and discovers he has the power to create anything he imagines.

I had difficulty relating to the protagonist. Not to spoil too much, but the story picked up considerably with the introduction of a second character.

“Yesterday House” by Fritz Leiber — Jack Berry is a biology student working in Maine for Professor Kesserich. Jack takes a boat past where he was told to go, and he discovers an island. As he explores it, he comes to a fence and climbs over. He meets a young woman who lives in a house, but she’s convinced it’s 1933 rather than 1951. Her aunts keep her on the island throughout the year, never allowing her to go to the mainland. He wants to prove the truth to her, if he can, without arousing her aunts’ suspicion.

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New Treasures: The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows edited by Marjorie Sandor

Friday, April 3, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I’ve covered a handful of vintage horror anthologies recently, including Horrors in Hiding and Horrors Unseen. Those books arose out of the American pulp tradition, and include stories from the writers you’d expect.

But what if you’re looking for writers you don’t expect? What if you’re interested in uncanny fiction by some of the best writers from around the world? If that’s the case, then Marjorie Sandor may have what you’re looking for, with a generous new collection of classic and new horror fiction from the four corners of the globe.

Strange, Mysterious and Unsettling… These Stories Are Uncanny!

From the deeply unsettling to the possibly supernatural, these thirty-one border-crossing stories from around the world explore the uncanny in literature, and delve into our increasingly unstable sense of self, home, and planet. The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows opens with “The Sand-man,” E.T.A. Hoffmann’s 1817 tale of doppelgangers and automatons — a tale that inspired generations of writers and thinkers to come. Stories by 19th and 20th century masters of the uncanny — including Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Shirley Jackson — form a foundation for sixteen award-winning contemporary authors, established and new, whose work blurs the boundaries between the familiar and the unknown. These writers come from Egypt, France, Germany, Japan, Poland, Russia, Scotland, England, Sweden, the United States, Uruguay, and Zambia — although their birthplaces are not always the terrains they plumb in their stories, nor do they confine themselves to their own eras. Contemporary authors include: Chris Adrian, Aimee Bender, Kate Bernheimer, Jean-Christophe Duchon-Doris, Mansoura Ez-Eldin, Jonathon Carroll, John Herdman, Kelly Link, Steven Millhauser, Joyce Carol Oates, Yoko Ogawa, Dean Paschal, Karen Russell, Namwali Serpell, Steve Stern and Karen Tidbeck.

The Uncanny Reader: Stories from the Shadows was published on February 24, 2015 by St. Martin’s Griffin. It is 576 pages, priced at $21.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition.