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Month: November 2015

Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg

Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg

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Great Short Novels of Science Fiction-back-small Great Short Novels of Science Fiction-small

I have a real fondness for novellas. Like many other readers, I think they’re the perfect length for SF and fantasy — long enough to develop and explore a fascinating new setting, but short enough to keep the narrative fast-paced and lean.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many outlets for novellas these days. Economic realities have squeezed the page counts of print magazines, and most online magazines don’t publish them at all (Rashida J. Smith’s GigaNotoSaurus being the notable exception). Perhaps that’s why I’ve been so excited by Tor.com‘s new novella line, which has already produced some terrific titles.

So I do find myself drawn to anthologies that include novellas… like my favorite book of the year (so far), The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas: 2015, Peter Crowther’s excellent Cities, and many others. But I do miss the days when folks like Robert Silverberg would produce mass market paperbacks collecting some of the best novellas from the top science fiction magazines, as he did in Great Short Novels of Science Fiction, a 95-cent Ballantine paperback from 1970.

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Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Theodora Goss

Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: Pro-Tip From Theodora Goss

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Theodora Goss-smallThis week’s Pro-Tip comes from Theodora Goss, a popular and multi-award nominated writer of fairy tales and poetry who teaches writing at Boston University and the Stonecoast MFA program. She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, Seiun, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List. Her short story “Singing of Mount Abora” won the World Fantasy Award.

Do You Write for More Than One Medium or in More Than One Genre? Why?

Let’s see, what have I written? A novel, which is coming out from Saga Press in 2017, with a sequel in 2018. Novellas, short stories, poems, essays. Some of my poems have been set to music, although they weren’t intended as song lyrics. I’ve written a poem to accompany a work of art in an exhibit. I’ve even written academic articles. There are certainly things I haven’t tried, but I’d like to . . .

Why do I write in different genres? Part of the reason is that for me, writing is half craft and half art. Writing in different genres lets me work on my craft: writing a poem, for example, will force me to pay attention to rhythms and the sounds of language, while writing a novel is an exercise in plotting, in constructing a more thoroughly realized world than I can create in a short story. Every genre requires something different from me, and writing in them all allows me to remain flexible, to practice my craft in a variety of ways.

The other part of the reason is that I love doing different things, just like a dancer who is trained in ballet but does modern and jazz, for the fun of it, to see what they will require from her, to rise to new challenges. I love new challenges! I haven’t yet written a script or a screenplay, but who knows… maybe someday!

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The Dark Issue 10 Now on Sale

The Dark Issue 10 Now on Sale

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The Dark Issue 10-smallThe Dark is a quarterly magazine co-edited by Jack Fisher and Sean Wallace. The tenth issue features four all-original short stories:

“The Devil Under the Maison Blue” by Michael Wehunt
“The Canary” by Lisa L. Hannett
“Self, Contained” by Kirstyn McDermott
“What Hands Like Ours Can Do” by Megan Arkenberg

You can read issues free online, or help support the magazine by subscribing to the ebook editions, available for the Kindle and Nook in Mobi and ePub format. Issues are around 50 pages, and priced at $2.99 through Amazon, B&N.com, Apple, Kobo, and other fine outlets. A one-year sub (six issues) is just $15 – subscribe today.

If you enjoy the magazine you can also support it by buying their books, reviewing stories, or even just leaving comments. Read issue 10 here, and see their complete back issue catalog here.

The cover for the November issue is by NKMandic.

The issue is cover dated November 2015. We last covered The Dark with Issue 9.

See our November Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.

Win a Copy of This Gulf of Time and Stars by Julie Czerneda

Win a Copy of This Gulf of Time and Stars by Julie Czerneda

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This Gulf of Time and Stars-smallOn Oct. 29 author Julie Czerneda and Allyson Johnson, the voice of the audible.com audiobook edition of This Gulf of Time and Stars, had a delightful conversation right here at Black Gate.

Now DAW Books has offered us one copy of the hardcover edition This Gulf of Time and Stars, and Audible Studios has offered one copy of the audiobook, to give away to you, our readers.

How do you make one of them yours? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the subject “This Gulf of Time and Stars,” and we’ll enter you into the contest.

That’s it! That’s all it takes. Two winners will be drawn at random from all entries, and we’ll announce the winners here. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law, or anywhere postage for a heavy hardcover is more than, like, 10 bucks (practically, that means US and Canada).

This Gulf of Time and Stars was published by DAW Books on November 3, 2015. It is 464 pages, priced at $25.95 in hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital edition.

New Treasures: The Wheel of Time Companion by Robert Jordan, et al

New Treasures: The Wheel of Time Companion by Robert Jordan, et al

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The Wheel of Time Companion-smallRobert Jordan’s 15-volume The Wheel of Time series is one of the most popular fantasy series written in the last 50 years, with over 44 millions copies sold (second only to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, with 60 million). It hasn’t enjoyed the same level of scholarship as Martin’s epic… but all that changed with the arrival of a single book, the massive 815-page Wheel of Time Companion, published by Tor Books on November 3.

Since its debut in 1990, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan has captivated millions of readers around the globe with its scope, originality, and compelling characters. Over the course of fifteen books and millions of words, the world that Jordan created grew in depth and complexity. However, only a fraction of what Jordan imagined ended up on the page, the rest going into his personal files. Now The Wheel of Time Companion sheds light on some of the most intriguing aspects of the world, including biographies and motivations of many characters that never made it into the books, but helped bring Jordan’s world to life.

Included in the volume in an A-to-Z format are:

– An entry for each named character
– An inclusive dictionary of the Old Tongue
– New maps of the Last Battle
– New portraits of many characters
– Histories and customs of the nations of the world
– The strength level of many channelers
– Descriptions of the flora and fauna unique to the world
– And much more!

The Wheel of Time Companion will be required reading for The Wheel of Time‘s millions of fans.

The Wheel of Time Companion: The People, Places and History of the Bestselling Series was written by Robert Jordan, Harriet McDougal, Alan Romanczuk, and Maria Simons, and published by Tor Books on November 3, 2015. It is 815 pages, priced at $39.99 in hardcover and $19.99 for the digital edition.

Approbation and Obloquies for the Lord of Strange Deaths

Approbation and Obloquies for the Lord of Strange Deaths

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LOSDWEBFuman_frontIt is not easy to be a fan of classic pulp fiction and a person of good conscience in the 21st Century. It is far easier to embrace steam punk and all that has followed in its wake which treats the past as if it had the mores and indeed the colloquialisms of the present. As it is, one never knows when the Thought Police, those self-appointed guardians of right thinking, will decide a Dashiell Hammett is no longer possessed of literary merit because he also threw around racial slurs that were common in his day and didn’t have the foresight to have an enlightened view of sexuality when it came to capturing the world he lived in and wrote about.

So what does this have to do with Sax Rohmer? Actually quite a lot. After a two year delay, Strange Attractor Press has finally published Lord of Strange Deaths, their impressive critical study of the man and his works. Such a tome was long overdue and very welcome indeed. Many of the individual essays are excellent and display the insight and level of research one expects from academics. Sadly, the book comes from the second decade of the current century which means one has to be reminded over and over that Sax Rohmer was a very bad person. He lived in colonial times and exploited the fears of the Boxer Uprising to create a criminal genius who heralded from China.

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Orbit US Announces Major Expansion

Orbit US Announces Major Expansion

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Orbit LogoOrbit Books has published some of the most acclaimed SF and fantasy of the past few years — including Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, Peter Higgins’s Wolfhound Century, John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper trilogy, N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, Mur Lafferty’s The Shambling Guide to New York City, M.R. Carey’s debut The Girl With All the Gifts, Ian Tregillis’s Alchemy Wars, and many, many others. Now comes word that Orbit’s success has been great enough that they are planning to grow their publishing schedule by 50% next year. The Orbit Team posted this announcement on their website on Friday:

Orbit, the SF and Fantasy imprint of Hachette Book Group, announces a major expansion plan starting from Fall 2016. The imprint will increase the number of titles it publishes by 50% to approximately 90 titles each year. Additional staff, including editorial, marketing, and design, will be recruited to support the expansion.

Tim Holman, Orbit Publisher and Hachette Book Group SVP, said: “There is a huge and diverse audience for SF and Fantasy out there, and it’s the perfect time to be expanding the list. Orbit is currently the fastest growing SF and Fantasy imprint in the U.S. with an increasing number of New York Times bestsellers – most recently Ann Leckie, whose debut Ancillary Justice was also the first novel to win every major SF award. Since our launch in 2008, we have been committed to publishing the most exciting authors in the field and looking for creative ways to connect with new readers. We’re very much looking forward to building on the success we’ve had, expanding the publishing team, and welcoming more authors to the list.”

This is great news for readers — and writers, time to polish those NaNoWriMo manuscripts! See the complete announcement here.

The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol. 1

The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol. 1

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SSvol1
The Savage Sword of Conan Vol. 1. Cover art by Boris Vallejo.

The Savage Sword of Conan is arguably the single greatest publication the Sword and Sorcery genre has ever seen. Spawned by the massive popularity of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian color comic which launched in 1970, Savage Sword was a black-and-white Marvel Magazine whose first issue appeared in 1974.

The new format freed creators from the restrictions of the Comics Code Authority, which constrained Conan’s full-color adventures to all-ages entertainment. The violence, gore, and lurid themes of Robert E. Howard’s original Conan tales would no longer be censored by enforced comic-book morality. Now readers of the Cimmerian’s adventures would get to know the real Conan and the real Hyborian Age — in all their blood-spattered, head-lopping, breast-heaving glory.

I was 8 years old when I bought my first issue.

It was early 1978 and my family had just moved from Fort Knox to Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Moving to that neighborhood changed my life for many reasons, but one of the most significant was the presence of the Blue Bird Foodmart at the bottom of the hill. For the first 7 years of my life I was a small-town kid who only got exposed to comics when my parents/grandparents took me to a store somewhere. Now I could walk down the hill to a store that sold comics, magazines, and novels. The problem was that as an 8-year-old comics fan I had barely any money to spend on all those great books.

On that day in ’78, I could have chosen the latest issue of Creepy, Eerie, Heavy Metal, or any number of Marvel or DC comics. But it was Savage Sword of Conan #28 that caught my eye. Comics went for 35 cents apiece in those days, but here was an extra-thick “comic” with an amazing Earl Norem painted cover. For one whole dollar, it offered four times as many pages and featured the most realistic sword-fights and battles I had ever seen, complete with beheadings, guttings, and stabs in the back. The interior art was by John Buscema and Alfredo Alcala, a legendary penciller-inker team, and I had never seen anything like it.

Needless to say, it blew my little mind and left me hungry for more tales of Conan…

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: David C. Smith on Bran Mak Morn

Discovering Robert E. Howard: David C. Smith on Bran Mak Morn

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BranMak_MistsI discovered Oron before I first read a Conan tale. It was pretty much my introduction to barbarians in the world of fantasy. Author David C. Smith co-wrote the Red Sonja and Bran Mak Morn books with Richard Tierney. It’s safe to say that he knows his Howard. And about barbarians. So it’s natural that our ‘Discovering Robert E. Howard’ series turned to Dave to talk about Bran Mak Morn. “Worms of the Earth” was one of the first non-Conan stories I read from REH. Wow. Read on for Dave’s take on yet another topic for the series.

I was around 14 or 15 years old when I discovered the Hyborian. So now what will become of us, without barbarians. Those men were one sort of resolution.

— “Waiting for the Barbarians” (1897-1908) Constantine Cavafy

Howard knew the truth of these lines by Cavafy, just as South African author J. M. Coetzee did in his acclaimed novel of the same title. What do the barbarians bring to societies that are past their glory, that are overripe, living softly, in decline? What do the barbarians bring to societies whose citizens exist with each day the same as the day before, overripe citizens living softly?

These citizens have become soft while standing on the backs of those they kept down, slaves and serfs, and those they have conquered or coerced — the barbarians. When at last the barbarians turn on the overripe soft ones who keep them down, it is indeed one sort of resolution.

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Future Treasures: The Curse of Jacob Tracy by Holly Messinger

Future Treasures: The Curse of Jacob Tracy by Holly Messinger

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The Curse of Jacob Tracy-smallMolly Tanzer, author of Vermillion, in her blurb for Holly Messinger’s upcoming novel The Curse of Jacob Tracy, says “The weird western renaissance is upon us!” Pretty high praise for a debut fantasy novel. If, like me, you’re a fan of the Weird Western, I think it might be rewarding to pay attention to this one.

St. Louis in 1880 is full of ghosts — mangled soldiers, tortured slaves, the innocent victims of war — and Jacob Tracy can see them all. Ever since Antietam, when he lay delirious among the dead and dying, Trace has been haunted by the country’s restless spirits. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church, and damn near his sanity. He stays out of ghost-populated cities as much as possible these days, guiding wagon trains West with his pragmatic and skeptical partner, Boz.

Then, just before the spring rush, Trace gets a letter from the wealthy and reclusive Sabine Fairweather. Sickly, sharp-tongued, and far too clever for her own good, Miss Fairweather needs a worthy man to retrieve a dead friend’s legacy from a nearby town — or so she says. When the errand proves far more sinister than advertised, Miss Fairweather admits to knowing about Trace’s curse, and suggests she might be able to help him — in exchange for a few more odd jobs.

Trace has no interest in being her pet psychic, but he’s been searching eighteen years for a way to curb his unruly curse, and Miss Fairweather’s knowledge of the spirit world is too tempting to ignore. As she steers him into one macabre situation after another, his powers flourish, and Trace begins to realize some good might be done with this curse of his. But Miss Fairweather is harboring some dark secrets of her own, and her meddling has brought Trace to the attention of something much older and more dangerous than any ghost.

The Curse of Jacob Tracy will be published by Thomas Dunne Books on December 1, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.