Black Gate – Page 830 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Black Static #45 Now on Sale

Sunday, March 22, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

I didn’t see the latest issue of Black Static during my weekly trip to the bookstore yesterday, but it usually arrives in the US a couple of weeks after it goes on sale in the UK, so it should be on sale shortly. Issue #45 is cover-dated March/April; and contains no less than eight stories:

“The Second Floor” by S.P. Miskowski
“The Grey Men” by Laura Mauro
“The Visitors” by Stephen Hargadon
“The Fishing Hut” by Steve Rasnic Tem
“Hungry Ghosts” by Emily B. Cataneo
“The Frequency of Existence” by Andrew Hook
“The Drop of Light and the Rise of Dark” by Cate Gardner
“The Cleansing” by Danny Rhodes

Here’s the opening paragraph to Laura Mauro’s “The Grey Men.”

The grey men emerged from the fog on a November afternoon. Three days of thick, pale mist preceded their arrival; three days in which it appeared that the sky had collapsed beneath its own weight, choking the streets with cloud. The world itself was overcast. The fog held firm from Hertfordshire all the way into London, and for the two long, empty hours of his daily commute Adam would stare out of the train window, trying to pinpoint the exact margin where the dew-wet sidings disappeared irretrievably into the white.

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Shock Midnight Ambushes, Last Gasp Duels and Paraplegic Dwarves: I’ve Been Playing Mount and Blade

Sunday, March 22, 2015 Connor Gormley Comments 4 comments

I’m not, by any means, a PC gamer: the laptop I’m using to write this is just about held together with duct tape and clumps of old twig, and I have no idea where I could even find a graphics card, let alone which one to get.

Mount & Blade, however, makes me want to become one. I’m running this thing on its lowest possible settings: reduced the character models to stickmen, the trees to papier-mâché, the textures to cardboard. I’ve stripped this game of all possible graphical fidelity to get it running OK. I mean it wasn’t all that much to start with, but now it looks like interactive diarrhea.

Yet, I’ve still decided that this is the most fun I’ve had with a game with ages. It’s one of the few games nowadays that can leave me transfixed for hours, or even days, at a time. It’s a shame then, that it’s still pretty darn obscure.

Just one little caveat before we start, though. I’m talking about the original Mount & Blade here, not the jazzed up sequel: Mount & Blade Warband. The two are pretty much the same; it’s just that Warband has a few minor improvements and tweaks, like a greater variety of quests, better graphics, better animations, the ability to flirt relentlessly with the ladies of the realm and a whole new faction to join.

There’s also multiplayer, really, really good multiplayer. If you can get Warband, get that, but the original ran better on my laptop, and I played it a load more, so I feel a little more comfortable talking about it. Although, really, everything I talk about here is applicable to Warband, even more so, probably.

Mount & Blade is an open world, action RPG developed by Taleworlds and published by Paradox interactive in 2008. Taking place in a moderately realistic fictional medieval world called Caladria, players take the role of a nondescript migrant from some distant land, come to make his or her fortune amidst the wars that have torn the country apart.

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New Treasures: Tales from the Nightside by Simon R. Green

Saturday, March 21, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

Simon R. Green’s first Nightside book, Something from the Nightside, was published a dozen years ago. Since then there have been eleven more; the most recent was The Bride Wore Black Leather (2012).

I always thought Nightside was a fascinating setting, but I’ve never had time to try one of the novels. But Tales from the Nightside, the first collection in the series, offers a chance to take a short trip to Nightside — just what I’ve been looking for. It includes ten stories, including “The Big Game,” a novella that has never before been published.

Welcome to the Nightside. It’s the secret heart of London, beating to its own rhythm, pumping lifeblood through the veins of its streets and alleys hidden in eternal darkness, where creatures of the night congregate and where the sun is afraid to shine. It’s the place to go if you’re looking to indulge the darker side of your nature — and to hell with the consequences.

Tales from the Nightside presents ten macabre mysteries that shine a dim beam into the neighborhood’s darkest corners to reveal things that should never come to light. Take a walk with such deadly and dangerous denizens of the Nightside as Razor Eddie, Dead Boy, and Larry Oblivion as they encounter things even more inhuman and inhumane than they are. And join John Taylor, the PI with a knack for finding lost things, as he confronts Sir Francis Varney, King of the Vampires, in a never-before-published novella-length adventure.

There may be nothing to be afraid of in the dark, but there’s plenty to be afraid of in the Nightside…

Tales from the Nightside includes the following stories.

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Belated Movie Reviews #3: Blood of Heroes

Saturday, March 21, 2015 Adrian Simmons Comments 4 comments

The 80s were quite a time for movies (word has even reached me that certain millennials have discovered the decade over at Tor.com), and some of my favorites are firmly rooted in that era — and one of my favorites from that decade is the 1989 Rutgur Hauer, Joan Chen, Vincent “REH” D’Onofrio effort The Blood of Heroes (BoH).

BoH stands both above and beside the many other dystopian movies for being a post-apocalyptic sports movie. And here’s the thing — that is ALL it is.

The apocalypse that put the world into such a sorry state? Not discussed — too busy trying to put a dog skull on a stake.

The high-tech dingus that will turn things around? That doesn’t happen in this movie — too busy winning matches in the hinterlands.

The guy-who-knows-the-only-weakness-of-Lord Motherraper? Also does not happen. Gotta win matches in the hinterlands to get into the Red City match.

But surely Joan Chen is going to get revenge on Lord Motherraper for murdering her family when he was roaming the world for steel and they wouldn’t name another target, a military target.

NO! Her family is alive and well, she just wants more out of her life than sustenance farming. And that means being a kwik for a team of juggers, sticking dog skulls on stakes in the hinterlands to win enough matches to play in the Red City and the big leagues!

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Vintage Treasures: Not Without Sorcery by Theodore Sturgeon

Saturday, March 21, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Theodore Sturgeon’s first short story collection was Without Sorcery, a handsome hardcover published in 1948 with an introduction by Ray Bradbury. As you can imagine, it’s a tough book to find these days, even for collectors.

The paperback edition, released 13 long years later, dropped five stories and the introduction, and was re-titled Not Without Sorcery. It became Sturgeon’s tenth collection and was released in two editions, from Ballantine (in 1961, with a rather drab cover by an unknown artist) and Del Rey (in 1975, with a far more interesting cover from artist Darrell K. Sweet.) 1975 was the last time the book saw a mass market edition; it remained out of print for 35 years, until Kessinger Publishing did a facsimile reprint edition in 2010.

Sturgeon was a Campbell writer through and through, and all eight stories in Not Without Sorcery appeared in the two pulp magazines John W. Campbell edited: Astounding Science Fiction, and its sister magazine Unknown Worlds. The stories were published over a two-year period, 1939-1941. I’ve assembled some of the original covers below, because I can never resist an excuse to showcase pulp magazines.

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March 2015 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

Friday, March 20, 2015 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

As promised in my fantasy magazine survey this morning, we kick off our coverage of John Joseph Adams’ excellent online magazine Lightspeed with #58, the March 2015 issue.

Lightspeed publishes both fantasy and SF, both new fiction and reprints. Among other stories, the March issue contains “A Face of Black Iron” by Matthew Hughes, the tenth standalone installment in his long-running Kaslo Chronicles, all of which are available online. Here’s the tantalizing blurb:

An ancient evil, lurking in another dimension through all the aeons since magic last ruled the universe, is striking out at Erm Kaslo, former hardboiled confidential operative (op) turned wizard’s henchman, and his employer, the proto-thaumaturge Diomedo Obron. Now the two, along with the mysterious Archon Filidor of Old Earth, must re-enter the Seventh Plane, discover what awaits them there, and try to destroy it before it destroys them.

You can read all ten stories in the series at the Lightspeed website.

The complete contents of the March issue are:

Fantasy

“A Face of Black Iron” by Matthew Hughes
“Documentary” by Vajra Chandrasekera — available March 24
“The Way Home” by Linda Nagata (from Operation Arcana)
“The Good Son” by Naomi Kritzer (from Jim Baen’s Universe, February 2009)

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Adapting Nostalgia to Be More Awesome (And How I Try to Contain my IDW Anger While Remaining Spoiler Free. Mostly)

Friday, March 20, 2015 mariebilodeau Comments 12 comments

Reboots are awesome. There you go. I’ve said it. Call blasphemy all you want, but I’m a fan of (some) adaptations, and 80s cartoons are high on my list of “Yes, please adapt.” It’s not just that modern companies are making the storylines better; they’re quite frankly making some of them make sense. Not in all cases, but in a heck of a lot of them.

I’m a child of the 80s. I grew up on these cartoons, and enjoyed their adaptations. I followed their various incarnations, too, but now is a golden age for storylines, with plenty flourishing.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I would not pause to admire these turtles' beauty. I would pause to stare at them in confusion. — Knee pads are a ninja’s BFF.

I’ve always been a fan of witty repartee, martial arts and turtles. Combine all three and you’ve sold me. Easily.

TMNT started as a rather dark comic book, grew into a 10-year long cartoon show in the 80s, then a 6-year run starting in 2003. Nickelodeon bought the rights in 2012, and BOOM, started everything up again.

~~IDW has two new comics lines, one based on the new cartoon show and one more based on the old comics (and much darker. I love it).~~ I struck that out because they just repeated one of my least favorite storylines ever (spoiler link). No conclusion on that yet, so I’m no longer including it (take that, IDW!) Let’s also ignore anything live action, because there is absolutely no winning there.

Anyway, back to the new cartoon. What makes the new turtles unique? Their personalities are more defined.

Michelangelo, the party one, is now more funny than annoying. Donatello gets more chances to shine (he’s my fave). Leonardo, the poor always responsible lead turtle, is now a geek and gets excited about Space Heroes (a riff off Star Trek: The Animated Series). Raphael is still angry and one of the most loyal and, although he pretends to be a hard-ass, he’s one of the more sensitive.

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Expanding Our Magazine Coverage at Black Gate

Friday, March 20, 2015 John ONeill Comments 19 comments

I’ve slowly been expanding our coverage of fantasy magazines here at Black Gate. Despite how dramatically the industry has changed over the decades since I started reading it, I still consider magazines the heart of the field. Our coverage is not nearly as comprehensive as I’d like it to be, but we’re getting there. I thought I’d pause for a moment and take stock of those publications we currently cover, and see if there are any obvious holes. They are:

Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by C.C. Finlay
Beneath Ceaseless Skies, edited by Scott H. Andrews
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, edited by Adrian Simmons, David Farney, William Ledbetter and James Frederick William Rowe
Nightmare, edited by John Joseph Adams
Clarkesworld, edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace
The Dark, edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace
Uncanny, edited by Lynne M. Thomas, Michael Damian Thomas, and Michi Trota
Weirdbook, edited by Douglas Draa‎
Interzone, edited by Andy Cox
Black Static, edited by Andy Cox
Weird Tales, edited by Marvin Kaye
Swords and Sorcery Magazine, edited by Curtis Ellett
Shimmer, edited by E. Catherine Tobler
Fantasy Scroll, edited by Iulian Ionescu, Frederick Doot, and Alexandra Zamorski
Gygax, edited by Jayson Elliot
Weird Fiction Review, edited by S.T. Joshi

Whew. That’s more than I thought.

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The History Manifesto and Sweeping Histories

Friday, March 20, 2015 Comments 6 comments

foundation — “History is the science of Science of Science Fiction”

If History is the science of Science of Science Fiction — who said that? — then History is the bedrock of Fantasy.

In High Fantasy the characters make new history by engaging with the old; Frodo disposes of the ring and secures Middle Earth’s future, but the Ring Wraiths are ancient kings and the politics is grounded in the past. In Low Fantasy — what we mostly call Sword and Sorcery — the characters forage like ants in the debris of history; Conan loots ancient tombs, and loses his sweetheart to an antique monster.

In between, the heroes of Heroic Fantasy delve in the past in order to remake the present; the heroes in Michael J. Sullivan’s Riyria Chronicles actually resolve the geopolitical plot with an extended stint of dungeoneering.

And if Science Fiction is about future history, then it’s also often about future ancient history. We love our alien artefacts and lost forerunner civilisations. What is Aliens if not a Dungeons and Dragons story, but with more face huggers?

So we readers of Speculative Fiction also have an appetite for history, not just the down in the dirt tales of derring-do with William Marshal or Harald Hardrada, or the Rifle Brigade, carving out their personal histories with blade or bullet, but longer thrilling stories of the rise and fall of civilisations, or the evolution of a particular strand of human experience, whether it be war or sexuallity, or gender, or commerce.

Oddly, as noted by a pair of top historians, not a lot of these books are written by card carrying academic historians anymore…

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New Treasures: Old Man’s Ghosts by Tom Lloyd

Thursday, March 19, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I’ve gotten to know a lot of writers — and aspiring writers — through my association with Black Gate over the years. Which means I’ve had the pleasure of reading many fine novels well before they’re released. Sometimes in draft, sometimes as an advance galley, and sometimes just as a favor to folks hoping for an advance review or a quick cover blurb. For a while in fact, it seemed I didn’t even pick up a novel unless I knew the author personally.

Recently I’ve been trying to change that. To go far afield, and seek out new talent from all corners of the world. I don’t know a single thing about author Tom Lloyd, for example, but I know I like the cover of his new book, and the description. What more do I need?

Some men can never outrun their ghosts. Enchei thought he’d found a home at last — a life of quiet obscurity far removed from the horror of his military days. After a decade in the Imperial City his mistakes have been few, but one has now returned to haunt him. As Narin’s pregnant lover comes to term, life has never been so perilous. There couldn’t be a worse time for a nightmare to be unleashed on the Imperial City, but luck’s rarely been on Narin’s side. Once, Enchei swore he’d take his own life rather than let his past catch up with him, but now it’s not just his own in the balance. Demons, rogue mages and vengeful noblemen haunt the city – and a man’s ghosts are always watching and waiting..

Old Man’s Ghosts was published by Gollancz on March 19, 2015. It is 400 pages, priced at $16.95 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital version.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.