Celebrating 1 Million Page Views: The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in July

Celebrating 1 Million Page Views: The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in July

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startersetWe invited America into our home last month to sit down and talk about fantasy, and America showed up. It stuck around too, peeking under the couch cushions and rooting around in the back of the fridge. By the end of July, the Black Gate servers had racked up 1.1 million page views — a new record for us, and the first time we’ve ever crossed a million.

We’re celebrating a bit this month, but not too hard. Because America is still here, with an insatiable appetite for news and reviews on the latest in new and classic fantasy. And also for bean dip, which America eats in great quantity. Unfortunately, America ate all the chips and left the lid off the salsa, letting it dry overnight. We love you America, but come on. Don’t be a jerk.

The most popular article on the Black Gate blog last month was a forensic analysis of the brand new Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set by Andrew Zimmerman Jones. Interest in the re-launch of D&D — which officially kicked off this month with the release of the new Player’s Handbook — has been very strong.

Next on the list was Howard Andrew Jones’s conversation with author Mark Lawrence, on the occasion of the publication of his new novel Prince of Fools.

Third was “Reading the Entrails,” Matthew David Surridge’s lengthy analysis of 25 years of Locus magazine reader polls on the Best Fantasy Novels of All Time, and how the results have changed over the years — and surprisingly, how they’ve stayed the same.

Rounding out the Top Five were D.B. Jackson’s article, “The Life and Times of a Midlist Author,” and James Maliszewski’s nostalgic look back at previous editions of Dungeons and Dragons, “New Editions Past.”

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in July follow.

  1. Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set: A Forensic Analysis
  2. Mark Lawrence and the Prince of Fools
  3. Reading the Entrails
  4. The Life and Times of a Midlist Author
  5. New Editions Past
  6. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The International Exhibition of SH
  7. Fantasy and Roleplaying Games
  8. My Fantasia Festival, Day 1: Ghost in the Shell
  9. Too Grand a Vision: A Review of Jodorowsky’s Dune
  10. A Date with the Scorpion: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Seven: Human Targets

     

  11. Secret Caverns and Death Traps: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Nine: Dead Man’s Trap
  12. Welcome To The Commonwealth: John Myers Myers’ Silverlock
  13. The Original Bug-Eyed Monster: Astounding Stories, May 1931
  14. Original Fantasy? In a Video Game? It’s About Time
  15. Celtiberian Treasures at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid
  16. Games Well Used
  17. Goth Chick News: Dracula Meets Game of Thrones
  18. Roman Mosaics at the Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Madrid
  19. Old Favorites: Katherine Kurtz’s Deryni
  20. The Family That Slays Dragons Together, Stays Together: Fantasy MMOs

     

  21. Confessions Of a Cormanite
  22. Afrofuturism and Empowerment
  23. My Fantasia Festival, Day Three (Part One): The Satellite Girl and Milk Cow, Demon of the Lute, and Patch Town
  24. A Bomb on the Highway: The Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Eight: Boomerang
  25. True North
  26. The Magic Gets Measured
  27. Blogging Sax Rohmer… in the Beginning, Part One
  28. The Godzilla Blu-ray Flood: Godzilla vs. Hedorah (Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster)
  29. The Drawing of the Dark by Tim Powers
  30. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Is Coming Back – Good or Bad?

     

  31. Changa’s Safari: Volume 2 by Milton Davis
  32. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Copyrighted Detective
  33. Art of the Genre: Gandalf, Conan, and Gray Mouser review Tales from the Emerald Serpent II…
  34. The New York Times on How Dungeons & Dragons Influenced a Generation of Writers
  35. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Sorcerer’s Ship by Hannes Bok
  36. Balance of Power
  37. Watch The First Full-Length Trailer for The Boxtrolls
  38. Kirkus Looks at The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volumes I – IV
  39. How to Slay a Dragon, Realistically
  40. Goth Chick News: The United States of Horror: There Is No Escape

     

  41. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Murder By Decree
  42. Vintage Treasures: H.P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space
  43. A Saxon Tower in Oxford
  44. A Fantasist Not On the Fantasy Shelf: Italo Calvino
  45. The 2014 World Fantasy Awards Ballot
  46. Support The Collectors Book of Virgil Finlay Kickstarter
  47. Ancient Worlds: If Your Family Tree Doesn’t Branch…
  48. The Start Of A Grand Adventure: Goblin Moon by Teresa Edgerton
  49. June Short Story Roundup
  50. Not A Visit From The Suck Fairy

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in June are here and you can see all 114 posts we made in the month of July here.

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Gruud

Congratz on the million+ hits! I for one stop by every day. It’s nice to know I’m in good company 😉

Thanks for continuing to provide genre fans with such an excellent resource.

I wonder why you guys haven’t been nominated for a Hugo …

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Scott Taylor

I’m in agreement with Gruud, so why haven’t we been nominated? I’m guessing because Hugo’s are a cool kids club where only the select few ‘friends’ get nominations, unless you have a runaway hit that brings the award legitimacy. To prove this, just ask Michael Whelan or Phil Foglio, both of whom finally said ‘enough, I refuse to let you nominate me again so other people can win!’ 🙂

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John ONeill

Gruud, Scott,

Thanks for the kind words, and your support. As for the Hugos… I have the upmost respect for the hard-working fans who administer and run the Hugo Awards, and I think they’re doing a great job.

Why haven’t we been nominated? Because not enough readers nominated us. Simple as that, really… there’s no “cool club” for us to join that would help (trust me — I looked!)

Bear in mind that for our first 5-6 years BLACK GATE didn’t have nearly enough readers to warrant a major award nomination. 2014 is really the first year our presence has been felt in the industry… so it seems a little impatient to start asking about awards just yet.

Besides, there IS no Hugo for “Best Website.” The closest category we might fit into is “Best Fanzine,” and we’re an odd fit there as well.

All in all, I don’t think a Hugo nomination is in Black Gate’s future (unless the nominating committee adds a Best Website category, which they’ve done in the past. And even then… have you seen our competition? There’s some stellar sites out there who have been denied a Hugo a lot longer than we have!)

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Gruud

I’ll readily admit my grasp of the various categories is a bit lacking, but do see what you mean now; not quite a fanzine, but not quite a blog/review site either, due to having so many topics and contributors.

But it is a very pretty site, whether it falls into a gap or no. So we’ll just hold out hope, and keep coming by.

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