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Month: November 2015

Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1953: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1953: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction January 1953-smallGalaxy rolled along into a new calendar year. Elsewhere in the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower was about to begin his first term in office, succeeding Harry S. Truman. It’s amazing to sit back for a moment and realize how long ago all of this great fiction was published.

“The Defenders” by Philip K. Dick – Humanity has been underground for years while the United States and Russia fight a nuclear war. On the surface, robots called leadys fight for humans, detonating bombs that destroy and irradiate the earth. It’s a harsh life for humans, drudging out their years without sunlight, struggling to survive while producing weapons to win the war. Taylor gets called from his rest period to go with a team to the surface to investigate some inconsistent reports from the leadys. It’s a dangerous assignment, given the amount of destruction and radiation awaiting them, but it’s not one he can refuse.

I didn’t want to give more of a description in fear that I might spoil the story. It has a couple of surprising points – the first of which is somewhat easy to guess. It has a classic, Cold War feel to it, which adds to its charm. Philip K. Dick used the story as a basis for the novel The Penultimate Truth, published in 1964.

“Teething Ring” by James Causey – An alien visits Melinda at her home, though she doesn’t realize he isn’t human. The strange man asks to survey her in exchange for one of his devices. Although she selects something for herself, her toddler son takes interest in a neural distorter and won’t be dissuaded. Melinda offers the man a dollar for it and gives it to her son; after all, it keeps him quiet.

It’s a lighthearted tale, but I didn’t find it that interesting. It does, however, make for a good relief between “The Defenders” and “Life Sentence.”

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Society of Illustrators Inducts Richard Powers into Hall of Fame

Society of Illustrators Inducts Richard Powers into Hall of Fame

Richard Powers Of all Possible Worlds-small Richard Powers The Goblin Reservation-small The-Man-in-the-High-Castle-Richard-Powers-small

Tor.com is reporting that legendary paperback artist Richard Powers, who illustrated hundreds of science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, has been inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Society of Illustrators.

Richard Powers began illustrating covers for American paperback publishers in 1950. He was extremely active in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, painting hundreds of covers for Berkley, Ballantine, Putnam, Doubleday, and many others. He died in 1998, and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2008.

The Society of Illustrators has been electing artists recognized for their ““distinguished achievement in the art of illustration” into the Hall of Fame since 1958. The newest Hall of Fame inductees include Beatrix Potter, Peter de Seve, Marshall Arisman, Guy Billout, Rolf Armstrong, and William Glackens.

Click on any of the images above to see Powers’ artwork in all its high-resolution glory.

Dr. Strange, Part II: Becoming Sorcerer Supreme and Dying in the Englehart Era

Dr. Strange, Part II: Becoming Sorcerer Supreme and Dying in the Englehart Era

Marvel_Premiere_Vol_1_9In a blog post of some weeks ago, looked at the one of my favorite Dr. Strange periods, when they’d established his overall mythos. The early 1970s was another kick-ass period for Dr. Strange, when the Master of the Mystic Arts became the Sorcerer Supreme.

In 1971, after the end of the series Strange Tales, Marvel’s Master of the Mystic Arts found a home in Marvel Premiere with issue #3. Marvel was just beginning an eerie period that mirrored the monster movie craze of the 1970s.

This period brought into prominence Marvel’s werewolves, zombies, Morbius the Living Vampire, Ghost Rider, Son-of-Satan, Dracula, Satana, Blade, and even ended up turning one of the X-Men into a furry monster. This tone seeped into Dr. Strange too.

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November 2015 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

November 2015 Lightspeed Magazine Now on Sale

Lightspeed Magazine November 2015-smallEditor John Joseph Adams shares some good news in his editorial this month.

Back in August, it was announced that both Lightspeed and our Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue specifically had been nominated for the British Fantasy Award. (Lightspeed was nominated in the Periodicals category, while WDSF was nominated in the Anthology category.) The awards were presented October 25 at FantasyCon 2015 in Nottingham, UK, and, alas, Lightspeed did not win in the Periodicals category. But WDSF did win for Best Anthology! Huge congrats to Christie Yant and the rest of the WDSF team, and thanks to everyone who voted for, supported, or helped create WDSF! You can find the full list of winners at britishfantasysociety.org. And, of course, if you somehow missed out on WDSF, you can learn more about that, including where to buy it, at destroysf.com.

This month Lightspeed has original fantasy from Helena Bell and Kenneth Schneyer, and fantasy reprints by Toh EnJoe and Karen Joy Fowler, and original SF by Rahul Kanakia and Caroline M. Yoachim, plus SF reprints by Brian Stableford and Kameron Hurley. All that plus their usual author spotlights, an interview with Ernest Cline, and book and movie reviews. eBook readers get a bonus reprint of Elizabeth Hand’s novella “The Least Trumps,” and an excerpt from Mira Grant’s novel Chimera.

Here’s the complete fiction contents for the November issue.

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Lost Stone Cities and Desolate Outposts: Exploring Runebound – The Mists of Zanaga

Lost Stone Cities and Desolate Outposts: Exploring Runebound – The Mists of Zanaga

Zanaga_BoxI previously wrote about Runebound (2nd Edition), an RPG-like board game from Fantasy Flight. You might want to give it a quick read to get the basics down. I also did a post on The Sands of Al-Kalim expansion. Next up is a look at another of the big box expansions: The Mists of Zanaga.

Mists is another of the ‘big box’ expansions for Runebound. It comes with a board that you lay over most of the original Runebound board, completely changing the terrain.

Runebound is a traditional Middle-Earth type of fantasy world, while The Sands of Al-Kalim was a desert setting. Mists of Zanaga is the classic jungle environment, with lost stone cities and desolate outposts in the wild.

The idea is that some powerful entity known as Tarakhe sleeps deep beneath Zangara. It is a primal force that corrupts the world and drove the lizardmen to abandon their empire and descend into barbarism.

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New Treasures: Solar Express by L.E. Modesitt

New Treasures: Solar Express by L.E. Modesitt

Solar Express Modesitt-smallWe don’t cover much hard science fiction at Black Gate. But we do cover our share of adventure SF… especially if it’s from writers we like, and if we hear good things about it.

Both of those things apply to L.E. Modesitt’s new novel Solar Express. I first heard about it from Arin Komins at Starfarer’s Despatch, who has excellent taste, and who tells us she’s “Really really loving the new Modesitt book, Solar Express. Very hard sf, near future. … And utterly wonderful commentary on politics.” So I got my hands on a copy, and I’m very much looking forward to relaxing with it this weekend.

You can’t militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth’s surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation.

The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun. Now there is a race between countries to see who can study and control the artifact dubbed the “Solar Express” before it perhaps destroys itself.

Leading the way for the North American Union is Alayna’s friend, Captain Christopher Tavoian, one of the first shuttle pilots to be trained for combat in space. But, as the alien craft gets closer to its destination, it begins to alter the surface of the sun in strange new ways, ways that could lead Alayna to revolutionary discoveries-provided Chris can prevent war from breaking out as he navigates among the escalating tensions between nations.

Solar Express was published by Tor Books on November 3, 2015. It is 448 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover, and $14.99 for the digital edition.

Announcing the Winners of Danie Ware’s Ecko Endgame from Titan Books

Announcing the Winners of Danie Ware’s Ecko Endgame from Titan Books

Ecko Endgame-small

Break out the party hats! We have three winners!

Last week we invited you to enter a contest to win one of three copies of Ecko Endgame, the latest book in one of the most talked-about series on the market, which James Lovegrove calls “The Matrix meets Game of Thrones.” To enter, all you had to do was send us an e-mail with the subject “Ecko Endgame.” As you can imagine, we were swamped with entries, so this turned into one of our shorter contests. Three winners were selected from the pool of eligible entries by the most reliable method known to modern science: D&D dice. The winners are:

Alan Phillips
Pamela Crowley-Evans
Jeff Zahnen

Congratulations all! Once again, we’d like to thank Titan Books for providing the prizes and making the contest possible. If you entered and didn’t win, our condolences — but there’s still time to enter to win Julie Czerneda’s brand new hardcover This Gulf of Time and Stars!

Ecko Endgame was published by Titan Books on November 10, 2015. It is 528 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback, and $3.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Amazing15.

Future Treasures: Daughter of Blood, Book 3 of The Wall of Night, by Helen Lowe

Future Treasures: Daughter of Blood, Book 3 of The Wall of Night, by Helen Lowe

The Heir of Night-small The Gathering of the Lost-small Daughter of Blood-small

Helen Lowe’s The Wall of Night has been getting some good press. The opening volume won the Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Debut, and the second was nominated for the 2013 David Gemmell Legend Award. At my old stomping grounds SF Site, Katherine Petersen kicked off her review of the second volume as follows:

Helen Lowe’s Wall of Night series has the potential to become a classic, right up there with the likes of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. The Gathering of the Lost is the second of this four-book series and takes us deeper into the world of Haarth where the first book, The Heir of Night, mostly introduced us to Malian, heir to the House of Night and her friend and ally Kalan, both of the Derai. The nine houses of the Derai garrison a large, rugged mountain range that gives the series its title. But after the Keep of Winds where Malian grew up was breached five years ago by long-time Derai enemies, the Darkswarm, it’s the whole land of Haarth, not just the Derai in jeopardy…

Lowe has a lyrical prose style that often seems more like poetry. Sometimes it seems writers try too hard to evoke their characters or surroundings, but for Lowe it seems effortless.

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Go Big Or Go Home?

Go Big Or Go Home?

Wolfe Long sunIn my last couple of posts (a while ago now) I was looking at small-scale storytelling, first talking about the cozy mystery, and then about whether the “intimate” form of fantasy novel might be that subgenre’s equivalent. I don’t think there’d be much of a disagreement, however, if I suggest that Fantasy and SF are better known – particularly by the general public – for their larger-scale (dare I say epic?) narratives.

And speaking of epics, aren’t there really two main subgenres of large-scale narratives in Fantasy and SF? The epic, and the military? With the former most closely associated with Fantasy, and the latter with SF.

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