Black Gate – Page 835 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

May/June Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

Sunday, June 7, 2015 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Yesterday, during the Nebula Awards banquet here in Chicago, I had the opportunity to talk with Gordon van Gelder, long-time publisher and editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and get his take on how well the transition to new editor C. C. Finlay has been proceeding. It was great to hear that he sees the same things I do — that F&SF has a new level of energy, and that the transition has generated some long overdue attention and interest for the magazine.

Jerard Bretts’s review at Tangent Online is fairly typical of the comments I’m seeing.

Charles Finlay’s second issue as editor is a strong one. The powerful stories by Grossbach, Gerrold and Sarafin are alone worth the price of entry.

Robert Grossbach’s “Entrepreneurs” is the longest and best story in this issue. Stretching from 1952 into the near future, it tells of the efforts of enterprising engineer Morty Rushman to make it big in business ─ with the help of some equally enterprising aliens from the Eep planet, Narusto. Grossbach uses the theme of alien contact to make some very amusing points about modern American capitalism in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond. The humour reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Sheckley, and there can’t be much higher praise than that.

This issue also features a Lovecraftian horror story by Albert E. Cowdrey, James Sarafin’s tale of hunting the wild creatures of the Pleistocene, a semi-autobiographical story by David Gerrold, and fiction from Lisa Mason, Sarah Pinsker, Caroline M. Yoachim, Amy Sterling Casil, and Rob Chilson.

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Blogging from the Nebulas Weekend

Sunday, June 7, 2015 Derek Kunsken Comments 1 comment

I’m in Chicago, at the 50th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend, and so far, it’s all pretty amazing. For those who don’t know, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America hold an annual Nebula Awards weekend that feels kind of like a very small fan con, except most of the attendees are SFWA members and networking and casual business discussion dominates.

My first Nebulas Weekend was in San José two years ago. Chicago is pretty impressive and the hotel, the Palmer House in downtown Chicago, is even moreso. And like at World Fantasy, attendees got loot bags upon arrival, provided by publishers. A small selection of by book bag contains: Tobias Buckell’s Sly Mongoose, an advance proof of Aliette de Bodard’s House of Shattered Wings, Daryl Gregory’s Afterparty, Ken Liu’s Grace of Kings, Nick Cutter’s The Acolyte and many more.

I don’t tend to go to as much programming as I used to at cons; I go more to meet editors, agents, publishers, and other writers, because hey, common interests. This weekend is an exception because the speakers are pretty uniformly the people who are steering the field itself.

I checked out a panel with Sheila Williams (Asimov’s) and Jacob Wiesman (Tachyon Press) about what editors are looking for. This is a bit in the same theme as Neil Clarke’s recent and excellent and data-based post about what he’s looking for at Clarkesworld. Based on the conversation, it struck me how much building Asimov’s each month is like building an anthology, where tone and editorial vision and story offering have to balance.

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The Series Series: Shieldwall: Barbarians! by M. Harold Page

Saturday, June 6, 2015 Sarah Avery Comments 2 comments

Things you’ve probably noticed if you’re a regular Black Gate reader:

When one of the Black Gate bloggers has a new book out, there’ll be posts here about it. Many posts, and that’s a good thing.
We bloggers like to cheer each other on. Writing can be a discouraging business, but celebrating each other’s good news is one of its great pleasures.
I will tell you straight up what I think a book’s virtues and shortcomings are, even if the book is by a fellow Black Gate blogger. I do give the occasional gushing review, but not indiscriminately.

I lay it out like that because there’s exactly one thing I wish were different about M. Harold Page’s new book, Shieldwall: Barbarians!, and it’s something I fully expect the next volume in the series will satisfy.

So, on to the story:

A brother chases warbands, and then armies, across the ragged edges of the Roman Empire, right into a city besieged by Attila the Hun, because that’s what it will take to rescue his sister from slavery. On the way, young Prince Hengest’s own warband doubts his readiness to lead them. Can a boy fostered among Romans ever truly become a man of the Jutes? And as their odds of finding Princess Tova look slimmer and slimmer, why should they keep risking their lives far from home against foes they have no quarrel with? The man who was to marry Tova, hoping to claim Hengest’s crown for himself, feeds those doubts. That insubordination will end in blood, sooner or later.

Hengest is too civilized for his barbarian kinsmen, too barbaric for the fading nobility of the empire, and too late to side with Attila, whose army encampment spreads as far as the eye can see. The young Jutish prince and his men will take the job the doomed city of Aurelianum offers them. Doomed — for Aurelianum cannot possibly stand against Attila, can it? What Hengest must do is find his sister, wherever her captors have hidden her in the city, and get her out through the carnage when at last Aurelianum falls and releases him from his oath to protect it.

Good thing Hengest is a master of improvisation, because nothing plays out as he expects.

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New Treasures: Probably Monsters by Ray Cluley

Saturday, June 6, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Toronto press Chizine Publications is one of the hottest publishers in the business. I was so impressed with their recent output that, after returning from the World Fantasy Convention in November of last year, I sat down to compose a survey of their catalog.

But it wasn’t just their 2014 releases that grabbed me. I was also highly intrigued by Probably Monsters, the debut collection from British Fantasy Award-winning author Ray Cluley, author of Water for Drowning (August 22, 2014). It was released in April, and I finally had a chance to get my hands on a copy yesterday, at the Nebula Awards weekend here in Chicago. I love a good monster story, and these look very promising indeed.

From British Fantasy Award-winning author Ray Cluley comes Probably Monsters — a collection of dark, weird, literary horror stories. Sometimes the monsters are bloodsucking fiends with fleshy wings. Sometimes they’re shambling dead things that won’t rest, or simply creatures red in tooth and claw. But often they’re worse than any of these. They’re the things that make us howl in the darkness, hoping no one hears. These are the monsters we make ourselves, and they can find us anywhere…

Probably Monsters was published by ChiZine Publications on April 14, 2015. It is 352 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback, and $7.99 for the digital version. The cover art is by Erik Mohr, with design by Samantha Beiko.

See all of our recent New Treasures articles here.

Science Fiction Seeking Legitimacy: Connoisseur’s Science Fiction, edited by Tom Boardman

Friday, June 5, 2015 William I. Lengeman III Comments 0 Comment

Connoisseur’s Science Fiction
Edited by Tom Boardman
Penguin Books (234 pages, $0.95, 1966)

It’s a small world. The last story in the last anthology I read (Other Dimensions, edited by Robert Silverberg) was “Disappearing Act,” by Alfred Bester. The next book I read was this one, and the first story therein was “Disappearing Act,” by Alfred Bester. How do you like that? In any event, I didn’t read it again, but copied my remarks from the review at my site to this one.

In Connoisseur’s Science Fiction, Boardman, a pioneering SF reviewer in Britain who went on to edit four more anthologies, attempted to put together a collection of science fiction stories that had literary merit — or something like that. And you thought this business about science fiction seeking legitimacy was a new thing. Half of the stories worked for me and half did not.

Thumbs Up

“Disappearing Act,” by Alfred Bester

The military is trying to determine why shell-shocked patients in a secret ward are disappearing. The answer is a fairly simple one having to do with other dimensions. But it’s made more interesting by the portrayal of the General in charge, who’s way over the top and who’s constantly demanding experts to sort out whatever he needs to know. Comparisons to a certain Kubrick movie wouldn’t be too far off the mark.

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Vintage Treasures: Jamie the Red by Gordon R. Dickson with Roland Green

Friday, June 5, 2015 John ONeill Comments 10 comments

Thieves World is one of the most endlessly creative concepts in the history of fantasy. Nearly four decades after it was first conceived, it’s still surprising me.

This time the surprise came in the shape of Jamie the Red, a 1984 fantasy novel written by Gordon R. Dickson and Roland Green and published by Ace Books, with a cover by Thieves World artist Walter Velez. It’s a surprise because, up until last week, I never knew it existed, despite the fact that I’ve been collecting Thieves World books for 37 years. And also because a little investigation revealed that it’s one of the most important books in the storied history of Thieves World — and for a fascinating reason.

But let’s back up. Who the heck is Jamie the Red, and just what does he have to do with Thieves World?

For our first clue, let’s turn to Paul Shackley’s Poul Anderson Appreciation blog. In August 2013, Paul wrote an entry titled Jamie the Red, where he said, in part:

Maybe everyone else out there already knew this but I certainly did not. When, in “The Gate of the Flying Knives” (Poul Anderson, Fantasy, New York, 1981), Anderson’s character, Cappen Varra, receives help from his friend, Jamie the Red, that friend is a Thieves’ World character in his own right and is even the title character of a novel by two other authors.

Paul was the first to tip me off about Jamie the Red. Yes, Jamie is a Thieves World character, and he does appear rather prominently in a Poul Anderson’s TW story. But Gordon R. Dickson was not even a Thieves World writer… so how the heck did he end up writing a Jamie the Red novel? And why isn’t there a Thieves World banner on the cover?

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R.A. MacAvoy’s The Book of Kells

Friday, June 5, 2015 Violette Malan Comments 3 comments

Lately I’ve been exploring portal fantasies, and last time I talked about Charles de Lint’s The Little Country. This week I’d like to take a look at R.A. MacAvoy’s The Book of Kells.

John Thornburn is a Canadian artist living and teaching in Dublin. He’s a bit of a klutz socially and emotionally, and has a tendency to focus on his work to the exclusion of everything else. His friend and sometime lover Derval O’Keane is an academic historian. The story begins when a young, injured girl suddenly appears in John’s bathroom, having come through a portal he inadvertently opened while working on the tracing of an old Gaelic pattern. It takes a bit of doing, but John and Derval finally figure out that Ailesh is the survivor of a Viking attack on her village in the Ireland of 985, saved by her father’s throwing her through the portal.

John and Derval take Ailesh back to her own time, and find the injured poet Labres MacCullen among the dead. John doesn’t know how to open the portal from this side, or even if it can be opened, so they accompany Ailesh and Labres to Dublin, where they hope to get help and justice from the King. Though the King in Dublin is himself a Dane at this point in history, they also want to warn him that the Vikings seem to have come as invaders, not as mere raiders who, having struck, will now go away.

Unknown to them, however, these same Vikings offered the lives of all the villagers to Odin, and the fact that Ailesh and Labres escaped puts them in a bit of a quandary. The leader decides that they must find and kill those who escaped, or forfeit their own lives – and the success of their expedition – to Odin’s displeasure.

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Goth Chick News: Sometimes There Just Are No Words…

Thursday, June 4, 2015 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

If you can’t remember the last time you were left slack-jawed and speechless then get ready.

Today is your day.

Steve Ramsdan is a London based filmmaker, editor and all around “behind the camera” sort of genius. To be perfectly honest, I had never heard of him until today, when I looked up his IMBD profile after someone sent me this.

Apparently he admired how Wes Anderson and Stanley Kubrick framed their shots in a similar way, and just got to wondering, “What if..?”

Go ahead – take a look…

Well? Do you agree? Genius?

Post a comment or drop a line to sue@blackgate.com, which goes for all of you except those who CAN remember the last time they were left slack-jawed and speechless – we really don’t need those details (you know who you are).

Fiction: Shieldwall: Barbarians (Chapter 1)

Thursday, June 4, 2015 Comments 0 Comment

Roman Cavalry Helmet — I originally wrote Shieldwall: Barbarians! for my son “Kurtzhau”. Why? Here he is at 10, utterly transfixed by the Sutton Hoo helmet.

I’ve been guest blogging over at Charles Stross‘s blog, a writer with so many rockets to his name I joke about buying him a Tracy Island set. I did a three part piece In defence of Traditional (Eurocentric Quasi-Medieval) Fantasy which sparked some… lively discussion in the comments. I also talked about my writing process, and of course my YA Dark Age adventure, Shieldwall: Barbarians! (UK, Amazon-free Epub), which I originally wrote for my son. Frankly, I’m a bit brain dead, so you’ll pardon me if I hit you with the first chapter of my book…

Shieldwall: Barbarians!
by M Harold Page
Chapter 1

AD 451, south coast of Roman Britain

A spear whirred past the ear of Hengest, son of King Fredulf of the Jutes. It thwacked into the door of his father’s mead hall.

Warriors appeared out of the shadows and charged across the moonlit courtyard towards Hengest. They came on in silence except for the sound of laboured breathing and the clink of mail.

Hengest stepped behind one of the posts holding up the porch roof and yelled, “We’re under attack!”

More weapons sailed through the night air.

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Unknown, September 1939: A Retro-Review

Thursday, June 4, 2015 Matthew Wuertz Comments 5 comments

My last post was a review of Galaxy’s September 1952 issue. So I’m jumping back more than a decade to an issue of another magazine I’ve wanted to get into for a few years.

At last year’s World Fantasy Convention, while John O’Neill was trying to set a world record for the number of books carried in a single stack (seriously, if you had seen it, you would have been impressed), I came across a dealer selling old issues of Unknown. Actually, I told my wife I was trying to find some, and she actually found a bin of them. While not impossible to come by, collecting issues of Unknown is somewhat more cost prohibitive than collecting issues of Galaxy.

Unknown (later retitled Unknown Worlds) was a speculative fiction magazine that ran from 1939 to 1942. It was published by Street & Smith, who also published Astounding. It was edited by John W. Campbell, Jr., who also edited Astounding. The early issues have art on the cover, like the September 1952 issue. These are also the more expensive ones. But if you don’t care too much about quality ~~because you’re just going to rip it while reading it~~, you can find some inexpensive copies. Mine was $15.

What I find perhaps most interesting about this particular issue is that it contains a novel written by H. L. Gold and L. Sprague de Camp. Not only that, but I think (prove me wrong or right, Rich Horton) that this may have been the first time Gold used this particular pseudonym. He’d had stories published as Horace L. Gold but not the familiar H. L. Gold that he continued to use as his soubriquet at Galaxy. Am I the only one geeking out about this? Please tell me I’m cool in a Galaxy/Unknown/pulp sort of way.

None But Lucifer by H. L. Gold and L. Sprague de Camp — William Hale has realized the truth about Earth. It isn’t Earth, at least not in the sense people think of it. Everyone on Earth is actually living in Hell.

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