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Month: April 2015

New Treasures: Between Worlds: The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories by Martha Wells

New Treasures: Between Worlds: The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories by Martha Wells

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Between Worlds Martha Wells-smallMartha Wells was one of the most popular writers ever published in Black Gate. In fact, her three Cineth stories featuring Giliead and Ilias helped bring us a host of new readers.

Those three stories have never been collected — until now. Between Worlds: The Collected Ile-Rien and Cineth Stories, one of six anthologies to be funded by the successful Six by Six Kickstarter in December, is now available. It contains “Holy Places,” “Houses of the Dead,” and “Reflections,” which first appeared in Black Gate 10, 11, and 12, as well as “Night at the Opera,” a brand new Nicholas and Reynard story set before The Death of the Necromancer, and two other stories.

We serialized Martha’s complete novel The Death of the Necromancer here.

The Six by Six project brought together six popular fantasy and SF authors — Martha Wells, Will McIntosh, Tina Connolly, Stephen Gaskell, Brenda Cooper, and Bradley P. Beaulieu — to create six new collections featuring each author. Two have shipped so far, Martha’s Between Worlds, and Futures Near and Far, featuring six stories by Will McIntosh.

In addition to the Black Gates stories and the new Nicholas and Reynard tale, Between Worlds also features “The Potter’s Daughter,” a prequel to Martha’s novel The Element of Fire, and the Giliead and Ilias story “Rites of Passage.”

Here’s the complete table of contents.

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Future Science Fiction, July 1953: A Retro-Review

Future Science Fiction, July 1953: A Retro-Review

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Future Science Fiction July 1953-smallI’ve been tracking down some less well-known Jack Vance stories, and that’s what led me to this issue of Future Science Fiction.

Future was one of two magazines (the other being Science Fiction Stories  — in its later years sometimes called The Original Science Fiction Stories, though that was never its official title) that Robert A. W. Lowdes edited for Columbia Publications, off and on, first for a couple of years in the late ’30s and early ’40s, after which the titles were revived in 1950, and continued to be published until 1960, under a set of titles and numberings that frankly make my head hurt.

I’ve written about Lowdes’ magazines before, and noted that he always had a tiny budget and still managed to produce pretty fair issues. This issue isn’t a particularly strong one, but it does have a quite distinguished list of authors, only one of whom could be called “Little Known.”

The format at this time was that of the classic pulp, about 7” by 10” with low quality paper. The cover here is by Milton Luros, illustrating Charles Dye’s “The Aeropause.” The features include “Down to Earth,” an extended letter column, this time featuring mostly letters suggesting alternate endings to Clifford Simak’s “… And the Truth Shall Make You Free,” which had appeared in the March issue.

It seems Lowndes had requested just this. I’m not familiar with the story, so I really couldn’t make head nor tail of the discussion. The only name I recognized among the letter writers was Robert Coulson, later a Hugo winner (with his wife Juanita) for the fanzine Yandro (which began appearing in this year, 1953), and also a novelist (mostly in collaboration with Gene De Weese.) Coulson was also credited as cowriter on Piers Anthony’s Laser Books novel But What of Earth?, but that was entirely against Anthony’s wishes, as Coulson made a number of changes at the behest of Laser series editor Roger Elwood, changes Anthony completely opposed. (Thanks to Ian Covell for this tidbit).

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Vintage Treasures: The Starbridge Chronicles by Paul Park

Vintage Treasures: The Starbridge Chronicles by Paul Park

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Soldiers of Paradise-small Sugar Rain-small The Cult of Loving Kindness

Paul Park is one of the most acclaimed writers working in American fantasy. His four-volume A Princess of Roumania series (A Princess of Roumania, The Tourmaline, The White Tyger, and The Hidden World), set in a parallel world where magic works, has been nominated for the World Fantasy, Tiptree, Locus, and Sidewise awards, and his short fiction has been nominated for both the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. Under his own name and the name Paulina Claiborne he has published fiction set in the Forgotten Realms, including the 2012 novel The Rose of Sarifal.

But Park’s first three novels, Soldiers of Paradise (1987), Sugar Rain (1989), and The Cult of Loving Kindness (1991), jointly known as The Starbridge Chronicles, are nearly forgotten today — and in fact have been out of print for over 20 years. But they were widely praised when they first appeared. Soldiers of Paradise was nominated for the Clarke Award, and Kim Stanley Robinson called it “A superb novel — vivid, harsh, mysterious.” Asimov’s SF magazine said “I was hooked… a real trip to someplace else that is really Someplace Else.”

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The Three Phases of Marvel’s Adam Warlock, Part Two: The Magus Saga

The Three Phases of Marvel’s Adam Warlock, Part Two: The Magus Saga

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Warlock Madness MonsterRead The Three Phases of Marvel’s Adam Warlock, Part One here.

My 10-year old son saw my Warlock comics (the ones showing the clowns and the Madness Monster I’ll discuss in this post) this morning and asked who Warlock was and why his villains were so weird. Then, of course, being ten, he asked if I could get him some Warlock comics. And I explained to him that he might not like them.

Warlock is a very sad hero, I explained. He tries to be good, and tries to make good choices, but all that ever happens is that people around him get hurt or he fails. I think that’s a good way to start this post.

I should also note that this post is constructed entirely of spoilers. 100%, wall-to-wall spoilers of a thirty-year old story. Embrace the spoilers.

In my last segment, I looked at the hero Adam Warlock, from his synthetic birth as “Him” in the 1960s to his rechristening as a messiah figure in 1972 and 1973 and eventual cancellation. This first period was an important start to what I said to my son. Adam Warlock tried to save Counter-Earth and ultimately, he could not expunge the evil in men and he left for the stars.

The second phase of the saga is the Jim Starlin as writer/artist era, which I measure from 1975 until the hero’s death in 1977. Jim Starlin produced two classic stories in this phase, the Magus arc and the Thanos arc. These are big and original for the comics of the time, so I’m going to cover the Starlin period in two posts. Today is the Magus saga.

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The Future of Fantasy: April New Releases

The Future of Fantasy: April New Releases

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The Vagrant-small Perfect Slate Brandon Sanderson-small The Grace of Kings-small

It’s tough to keep up on all the exciting new fantasy releases every month. But that’s why Black Gate is in your life. That and — admit it — you love Goth Chick’s Halloween Show reports.

April looks pretty exciting from where I sit, with a new fantasy debut from wunderkind Ken Liu, an exciting line up of graphic novels — including new Alan Moore — some fresh installments in popular series, and a lot more. We’re here to point you towards the most exciting releases of the month, so let’s get started.

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2014 James Tiptree, Jr. Award Winners Announced

2014 James Tiptree, Jr. Award Winners Announced

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The Girl in the Road-small My Real Children-small

With all the drama and controversy over this year’s Hugo Awards, we have neglected to inform you of the other major award new this week. Shame on us.

The 2014 James Tiptree, Jr. Awards were given out this week. The Tiptrees, named after one of the finest SF writers of the 20th Century, are awarded annually to works of science fiction or fantasy that explore and expand gender roles. This year the winners are Monica Byrne’s The Girl in the Road (Crown) and Jo Walton’s My Real Children (Tor).

As usual, the jury released a statement about each of the winners; here’s what they said this year.

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Why I Was So, So Wrong about the Standard Fantasy Setting

Why I Was So, So Wrong about the Standard Fantasy Setting

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The Sailor on the Seas of Fate-smallSo I wrote a stonking great think piece thing about the Standard Fantasy Setting a while back and a lot of people read it. Some of those people liked it and some of those people didn’t; that’s fine, it’s got to the point where I only cry for fifteen minutes when someone criticizes me now.

The problem is, though, the more I think about it, the more I think about the points I made, the more I find myself in the latter camp, the more I catch myself bad-mouthing me behind my back and trying to suffocate me in my sleep. That’s a very bad thing when you’re a bona-fide messiah, chosen by the gods to lead the masses to enlightenment.

So yeah, I thought I’d write this follow-up post, explaining what was wrong with the article and to set the record straight. It’s more for me than anyone else… mostly because, goddammit, no one criticizes Connor Gormley better than Connor Gormley does.

I had good intentions at the start, yeah. It was going to be a much more balanced look at the standard fantasy setting, its pros and cons and a pretty mild critique; and you can still see elements of that initial idea kicking around in there, in what I actually said about the setting. The fact that it lets authors focus on narrative pacing, on character development, or outright, balls-to-the-mothertrucking walls action if they want, without having to worry about world building or introducing entirely new creations because most readers already know the characteristics of Elves, Dwarves and Orcs and what not, or at least the nature of a medieval-ish society. Michael Moorcock might be able to meet the compromise, yeah, but Michael Moorcock is essentially Jesus, so I don’t think it’s fair to count him (which, renders half of the article moot, anyway).

Where the problems arose was when I started spouting out things like “A genre that, by its very nature, should have no restrictions, that should be free of limitations and impossible to define has become one of the most rigid and easily distinguishable genres in our modern spectrum.”

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Weird Fiction Review #5 Now on Sale

Weird Fiction Review #5 Now on Sale

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Weird Fiction Review 5-smallWeird Fiction Review is a terrific little magazine. In fact, it has a lot in common with the print version of Black Gate — it comes out once a year, the issues are huge (300+ pages), it’s crammed with art and pictures, and it contains a nice mix of fantasy fiction and articles.

It’s also more expensive than it probably should be. It is limited to 500 copies, and is priced as a limited-edition collectible: $35 per copy. That seems a lot for a magazine (and speaking as a publisher who used to charge 18 bucks for a small press magazine, that’s saying something.) I’m not sure I understand the business model behind a limited print run on a magazine, but the Centipede Press folks clearly know what they’re doing.

In any event, the issue looks terrific, with brand new short fiction from Brian Stableford, Darrell Schweitzer, Jason V Brock, Robert H. Waugh, and many others — plus a reprint from James Branch Cabell. There are also poems from Chad Hensley, Wade German, Charles Lovecraft, and many others.

The non-fiction includes Dennis Etchison’s 16-page photo essay on the collection and work of collector extraordinaire Forrest J Ackerman, “Presenting! The Amazing! Ackermonster!” (originally published in 1967), a 10-page color gallery by cover artist Travis Louie, a look at James Branch Cabell’s “Machen” story by Darrell Schweitzer, an article on — and interview with — MAD magazine editor Al Feldstein, Dennis Etchison’s interview with Ray Bradbury, Fifty Essential Comics by Danel Olson, Forgotten Masters of the Weird Tale by John Pelan, and tons more.

For whatever reason, the issue is not available through Amazon.com until September 15. But it’s for sale now at the Centipede Press website, and has been selling on eBay and other online outlets for a few months.

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There Will be Blood Books

There Will be Blood Books

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Huff PriceThe great thing about the people in Tanya Huff’s Blood Books is that they act like… well, like people. This is remarkable for two reasons. First, not all of them are people; second, not all authors allow their characters to act like themselves all the time. Huff insists on it. Even when it makes writing the story difficult.

Let me qualify. All the characters in the Blood Books are people. Not all of them are human. They do act like themselves all the time, which isn’t to say that they act the way you expect them to. Not at all. More often than not, they’ll surprise you. But they’ll surprise you in a way that makes you go “Oh! Wow!” And not in a way that makes you go “Huh? What?”

The human protagonist, Vicky Nelson, was an extremely successful police detective, the kind who doesn’t suffer fools, and therefore doesn’t make a lot of friends among her peers. When she develops night blindness, she has two options, take a desk job, or leave the force. Being who she is, she chooses to leave the force and start her own detective agency. She’s stubborn, arrogant, and strong – exactly the kind of person you’d need if you were in trouble. Immanent blindness doesn’t change that.

The vampire protagonist, Henry Fitzroy, is the Duke of Richmond, the bastard son of Henry VIII. He doesn’t act like a young man living at the end of the 20th century. He acts like the son of a king, who’s been around for 450 years, has actually lived through all the changes that took place in those years, and who subsequently knows how to pretend that he’s a man living in the 1990’s. He’s a vampire, but he’s also the son of a powerful king, so for him, “territory” always has two meanings.

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Goth Chick News: How Much for the Party Coffin?

Goth Chick News: How Much for the Party Coffin?

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HAA Halloween and Attractions Show-smallFor the fifteenth year, Transworld invited Black Gate back to cover one of the largest horror industry trade expos in the US; the Halloween and Attractions Show (“HAA”) in St. Louis, MO.

If you’ve ever wondered where the movie special effects guys go when they aren’t slinging gore for the latest scream-fest, then I can safely report that I know – they’re cooking up crazy makeup, animatronics and other visual gross-outs for the professional haunt industry.

The HAA is a “trade only” event, meaning the general public isn’t invited, but that didn’t stop a perpetual crowd from standing around outside the main entrance to the America’s Convention Center in order to get a glimpse of the attendees.

And as always, there is quite a lot to glimpse.

Over 250 exhibitors, some with what were essentially full-scale, mobile attractions, filled the cavernous convention space displaying everything from fog machines (with realistic “scents” – let’s just say yuck right here) to audio backgrounds and latex makeup elements to $15K+ robotic effects. As one attendee put it, “This is Christmas in March for everyone in the horror industry.”

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