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Dark Muse News: Battleborn Magazine Issues 2 and 3

Dark Muse News: Battleborn Magazine Issues 2 and 3

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[LEFT] Battleborn issue #1 (cover art by Samuel Dillon); [CENTER] Interior Art for “Jaguar’s Children” by Greg Mele (artist Babeto Daroz); [RIGHT] art for Lee Patton’s “Temple of the River King.”
Black Gate has covered the inception of Battleborn magazine as it spawned from an August 2025 crowdfunding on Indiegogo. Columnist and author Mark Rigney interviewed the champion and chief editor Sean CW Korsgaard over three segments: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Too much ground to recap here, but we can highlight that the goal of the magazine is to blend contemporary Sword & Sorcery with reprints of classics (beyond Robert E. Howard, there will be Michael Shea, David Drake, and even more….that we ‘kane’t’ wait to share the identities of!)

Sean CW Korsgaard is not to be confused with the Commander of Battleborn Magazine. This character is akin to the Skull from Tales from the Magician’s Skull, and he is as rough as the skeletal icon, but perhaps a bit easier on his interns. The Commander has provided his sacred guidance below.

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Military Cyborgs, Alien Plants, and Desert Heists: January-February 2026 Print Science Fiction Magazines

Military Cyborgs, Alien Plants, and Desert Heists: January-February 2026 Print Science Fiction Magazines

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The January-February issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and
Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by Tithi Luadthong and Dominic Harman

We’ve settled into a new reality with Analog and Asimov’s SF. Both magazines are consistently running more than two months late, but both are at least on a predictable schedule, arriving regularly in two-month intervals. Readers more observant than I have pointed out that the publisher, Must Read Magazines, has removed the cover date and Next Issue date from the covers entirely, which was probably a good idea.

They do provide semi-regular updates online, and on March 31st Emily Alta Hockaday, Managing Editor at Dell Magazines, posted this in the Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine Fan Club on Facebook in response to a question on postal delivery.

We’re in the process of switching printers — both because of print quality and the delays we’ve experienced with them. Once we have the contract with the new printer figured out, I’ll have warehouse dates to share for both March/April and May/June.

Hopefully that change will help them gradually get back on schedule. In other news, Sheila Williams continues to recover from the brain aneurysm she suffered two months ago. She remains hospitalized, but her family posts occasional updates, including the delightful photo of Sheila below.

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Avon Fantasy Reader, edited by Donald A. Wollheim

Avon Fantasy Reader, edited by Donald A. Wollheim

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A complete set (18 issues) of Avon Fantasy Reader, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and published 1947-1952

Donald A. Wollheim edited a magazine between the years 1947 to 1952 called Avon Fantasy Reader for Avon Publishers. There were 18 issues, publishing mostly reprints.

Erik Mona reviewed the first issue of Avon Fantasy Reader for Black Gate back in 2023.

I’ve never seen a copy of any of these, but in the late 1960s, George Ernsberger selected some of the best stories from the magazine for two paperback volumes. I believe there were only two. Here are some quick looks at the paperbacks, which I own and have read.

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Dark Muse News: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Issues #8, 9, & 10

Dark Muse News: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Issues #8, 9, & 10

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Cover Artists Cover #8 – Jimmy Makepeace  Cover #9 – Plastiboo  Cover #10 – Matej Kollár

Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery (NESS) mgazine, starting with Micheal Harrington’s 2022 interview with Oliver Brackenbury (champion and editor of NESS), through 2023 with NESS’s first two magazine releases (also Greg Mele’s review of #1), and then into 2024 with NESS’s first book “Beating Heart and Battle Axes and its two-novella combo book Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery, and then in 2025 we covered NESS‘s publication of a NEW Jirel of Joiry tale! (2025) and we interviewed one of their key New Edge authors, Bryn Hammond.

Now in 2026, NESS brings us more with promises of Issues 8, 9, and 10!

The campaign to fund and expand them ends just days after this posting (March 14th )!  Hurry now to Backerkit to get some exclusives like a poster featuring live models in full S&S costume, discounted back issues, and a cover art postcard; also, backing unlocks more interior art and bumps author payments. If you miss out, or want some of the prior rewards from previous crowdfunding, get back issues and other NESS offerings in their shop, noting that print copies often have limited print runs.

So what is in the next three issues? We asked Oliver Brackenbury that, and his answer is below. And we had a feeling Jirel of Joiry would return, and we asked Molly Tanzer to provide a bit of perspective on the heroine.

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Exploring the Dark Side of Life: Remains, edited by Andrew Cox

Exploring the Dark Side of Life: Remains, edited by Andrew Cox

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Remains, issues 4 and 4. Cover art by Richard Wagner

There are readers who, like me, prefer dark fiction in short form, because their suspension of disbelief is too brief to sustain — with a few exceptions — a full novel.

For people like us here’s a real treat: the new magazine/anthology Remains, edited by Andy Cox and illustrated by Richard Wagner, both well known for their previous work with the mythical Black Static magazine.

The first two issues are already sold out, but volume 3 ( published in late 2025) and the brand new volume 4 are available to entertain and disquiet.

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Moon Pirates, Deadly Nanobots, and Alien Plagues: November-December Print Science Fiction Magazines

Moon Pirates, Deadly Nanobots, and Alien Plagues: November-December Print Science Fiction Magazines

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Summer 2025 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and the
November/December issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and
Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by John Jennings, Eldar Zakirov, and Shutterstock

It’s a bittersweet month for fans of print SF magazines. First the good news. For the first time since September 2024, there’s a full complement of science fiction magazines on the shelves. The Summer 2025 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction is at last available, six months late and with an 18 month-gap since the last issue, but it’s here and we’re delighted to see it. Yes, the magazines that accompany it, Asimov’s SF and Analog, are also more than two months late, cover-dated November-December 2025 but not available until last week, but at this point we know better than to complain. We’re just grateful they’re here at all.

Now the bad news. And unfortunately, it’s bad indeed. Yesterday, January 12, the news spread that Sheila Williams, the brilliant and tireless editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction, had been hospitalized with a brain aneurysm. She is reportedly conscious, and communicating with family, and we hope and pray for her speedy recovery. In my opinion Sheila is the most important editor currently at work in genre magazines, and without her the field will be enormously diminished.

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Quatro-Decadal Review: Asimov’s Science Fiction, November 1999, edited by Gardner Dozois and Shelia Williams

Quatro-Decadal Review: Asimov’s Science Fiction, November 1999, edited by Gardner Dozois and Shelia Williams

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Interesting, but suspiciously CGI-like cover art by Jim Burns

Column: Reflections, Autographs, by Robert Silverberg

Silverberg spent the summer of ’99 signing copies of Dying Inside. 7,000 autographs — a novella in and of itself. He muses on autographs and people who collect them.

  • His future wife signed in ‘81
  • Silverberg quit the writing game in disgust in the 70’s. In ’75 at a con he asked near-immortal Jack Williamson for his autograph. “For Bob Silverberg, who used to write great SF — trusting he’ll do it again — with a vast admiration.” Just when you get out, they pull you back in!
  • Asimov who dedicated The Gods Themselves so exuberantly dedicated to Robert Silverberg that he asked him to remove it from future editions.
  • His favorite — a non-writing friend who playfully wrote in a paperback coy of Moby Dick. “Jerry had playfully added one little touch of improvement on the inside front cover, an inscription that read: To Bob with respect and admiration—Herman.”

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Quatro-Decadal Review: Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 1999, edited by Stanley Schmidt

Quatro-Decadal Review: Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 1999, edited by Stanley Schmidt

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Cover Art by Kim Poor

Editorial, Technological Temptation by Stanley Schmidt

Cameras at stop-lights, that is the issue that has rubbed Schmidt’s libertarian streak wrong. Very wrong! He soon spins a future of nanny-state-over-arching-safety-protocols.

I’m not an expert at the art of rhetoric and argument, but even I am immediately pick up on several logic holes, beginning with his fundamental argument, “That if it leads to a reduction in crime it must be good, therefore there should be more of it.” Thus, more cameras, cameras everywhere, in your home even! Then he wraps it up with a little of the ol’ argument from authority with the Ben Franklin chestnut about “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
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From Decades of Robert E. Howard Scholarship: The Solomon Kane Companion by Fred Blosser

From Decades of Robert E. Howard Scholarship: The Solomon Kane Companion by Fred Blosser

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The Solomon Kane Companion by Fred Blosser (Pulp Hero Press, June 17, 2025)

If you’re familiar with Robert E. Howard Fandom, you already know who Fred Blosser is. I first encountered his work back in the early 1970s, when he was writing articles and reviews for Marvel Comics’ Savage Sword of Conan magazine.

For SSoC, Blosser authored well-researched articles about topics such as the Picts in Howard’s fiction, REH Fanzines, Howard’s Kozaks, and a history of Howard’s puritan adventurer, Solomon Kane.

Now Blosser has taken that last one much farther, producing a book called The Solomon Kane Companion, published by Pulp Hero Press, who kindly sent me a review copy. As I mentioned, Kane is a puritan, and his adventures take place in the Elizabethan era. He was created by Robert E. Howard while Howard was still in high school, and his first published appearance was in the August 1928 issue of Weird Tales, in the story “Red Shadows.”

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The Best Short SF: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Part II

The Best Short SF: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Part II

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F&SF, February 1973. Cover by Bert Tanner

For this installment, we look at a selection of tales from The Best Fantasy Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (1985), edited by Edward L. Ferman.

“Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal,” a novelette by Robert Aickman

First published in F&SF, February 1973
Read the story in the original magazine here

A young girl records her travels in Italy, where she and her family are hosted by a Contessa. At a soirée she meets a hauntingly enchanting suitor, and after a nocturnal encounter, she begins to experience a strange transformation. This vampire tale was the first winner of a World Fantasy Award for short fiction. The prose is elegant and seemed convincingly of its intended 1830s setting.

Rating: *** (Good)
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