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Month: November 2015

Seven Important Advantages of Brunettes in a Sword and Sorcery Setting (and Life in General)

Seven Important Advantages of Brunettes in a Sword and Sorcery Setting (and Life in General)

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I’m a brunette. I love being a brunette. I believe it’s both an underestimated and a lifesaving hair color. I have, in fact, studied this in my thirty-some years of (mostly) brunette-dom and sword and sorcery fandom. Today, I share my important, non-scientific and non-criticially supported findings with all of you.

There are actually three brunettes in this picture. Can you spot them?
There are actually three brunettes in this picture. Can you spot them?

1 – Brown is the Color of Dirt

That is an advantage, trust me! Being a brunette is so common that people think you could be anybody. Your own parents, should they have golden or red locks, might not recognize you from the other brown-haired child next door. This is good! Be unnoticeable. I imagine, through no personal experience of my own, that it’s also helpful in getting away with crime. *shifty eyes*

2 – You Won’t be a Giant Beacon

My roommate is a redhead. I purposefully chose to live with a redhead for a simple reason: in any invading scenario, she’ll lead off the enemy troops with her beacon of a head while I make a good getaway. (I’m not so shallow that I just live with her because she’s a redhead. She also bakes bread.)

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S.T. Joshi Is Mad as Hell

S.T. Joshi Is Mad as Hell

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H.P. Lovecraft in Brooklyn, 1922.
H.P. Lovecraft in Brooklyn, 1922.

Lovecraft biographer and anthologist S.T. Joshi has lost his cool air over the World Fantasy Convention’s decision to remodel their awards:

HP Lovecraft’s biographer ST Joshi has returned his two World Fantasy awards following the organisers’ decision to stop using a bust of the author for the annual trophy – a move the Lovecraft expert called “a craven yielding to the worst sort of political correctness”.

The change was announced on Sunday. It follows a year-long campaign led by the author Daniel José Older, who launched a petition calling for the awards to end their trophy’s association with “avowed racist” Lovecraft.

You don’t have Joshi to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is his last WFC. Writing to WFC co-chairman David G. Hartwell, Joshi said:

Please make sure that I am not nominated for any future World Fantasy Award. I will not accept the award if it is bestowed upon me.

I will never attend another World Fantasy Convention as long as I live. And I will do everything in my power to urge a boycott of the World Fantasy Convention among my many friends and colleagues.

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Cover Reveal: A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin

Cover Reveal: A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin

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Frederic S. Durbin’s short story “World’s End” appeared in Black Gate 15, our last print issue, and it instantly made him a favorite among our readers. In his review of the issue, Matthew Wuertz called it “full of action, with a bit of humor… a very fast read.”

Fred’s first novel was Dragonfly (1999), and his second, The Star Shard, was released in 2012. I’ve been anxiously awaiting his third, so I was delighted to learn that he’s part of the Renaissance in modern fantasy going on at Saga Press. A Green and Ancient Light will be released next June.

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 185 Now Available

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 185 Now Available

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Beneath Ceaseless Skies 185-smallI’m getting behind on BCS again (already??), so it’s time to play catch-up.

Issue #185 is the special Halloween issue, and contains new fiction from Ian McHugh and Cory Skerry, a podcast by Rebecca Campbell, and a reprint by Christopher Green. It is cover-dated October 29.

“Demons Enough,” by Ian McHugh
The leech crouched in the broken hole where the window had been. Its glamour made it hard to discern details. Thorfinn had seen leeches in daylight, knew the ragged, filthy reality. His gaze flickered involuntarily up to the dark hollows of its eyes. It was an effort to tear away again from the hypnotic stare.

“Bloodless,” by Cory Skerry
The strange moment broke, and suddenly the stranger in her circle was an enemy again, and Kamalija struck out with her knife. He had already ducked back, and the blade dragged then stopped at the line where they’d poured her blood, as if the air was made of clay. She couldn’t force it any further, and she watched his back as he bounded into the forest.

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Vintage Treasures: The Ring of Truth by David J. Lake

Vintage Treasures: The Ring of Truth by David J. Lake

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The Ring of Truth-smallI don’t know a darn thing about The Ring of Truth. I found it in a 14-book collection I bought on eBay around three bucks (the same set I found Croyd and Light a Last Candle in). It was published by DAW in 1984, has never been reprinted, and I’ve sure never seen it before. To tell the truth, I don’t know anything about the author, David J. Lake, either. According to the ISFDB, he produced nine novels between 1976 and 1988, most of them published only in Australia.

But that’s okay. Heck, I love a good literary mystery. Exploring the vintage paperbacks of this genre is an endless voyage of discovery. Who knows what undiscovered wonders, what secrets to the universe, lie hidden in these books? Nobody bug me for the next few hours while I find out.

Our cosmos, throughout its enormous length of galaxies, and down to its smallest molecules, obeys the same laws of physics and chemistry from one end to the other. But it is now suspected that somewhere in the vast reaches of space, there may well be other universes with completely different natural laws.

But even on these worlds, foreign beyond imagining, there may yet be great adventurers — alien Magellans and Columbuses whose thirst for exploration cannot be assuaged. Intelligent beings who would risk anything to know what lies over the horizon, beyond the parameters of the known world.

Travel now with Prince Kernin of Palur, just such an explorer in just such an alien universe, and discover wonders beyond imagining, in a world very different from our own, as he ventures to the ends of his earth and beyond to find the elusive Ring of Truth!

The Ring of Truth was published by DAW Books in June 1984. It is 192 pages, priced at $2.95. There is no digital edition. The cover is by Ken W. Kelly.

Goth Chick News: No Happy Ending for Ripley, But Hope for Prometheus Franchise

Goth Chick News: No Happy Ending for Ripley, But Hope for Prometheus Franchise

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Thankfully this all happened when I was deeply immersed in “the season,” so the enormous sadness was delayed in favor of scaring the snot out of the neighborhood youngsters.

But now the news has finally had a chance to sink in, and I am forced to seek comfort in well-blended adult beverages and berating the interns.

On October 29th, writer / director Neill Blomkamp took to Twitter to shatter our hearts:

Neill Blomkamp Alien cancelled

In the two weeks since, word is that the Alien sequel is even less than “holding” and more like entirely nuked.

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New Treasures: The Madness of Cthulhu, Volume Two, edited by S.T. Joshi

New Treasures: The Madness of Cthulhu, Volume Two, edited by S.T. Joshi

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The Madness of Cthulhu Volume 2-small

In his Black Gate review of the first volume of The Madness of Cthulhu, G. Winston Hyatt wrote:

Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness serves as the inspiration for many of the authors in The Madness of Cthulhu… it’s masterful in concept and at times in execution. A fusion of Antarctic adventure, science fiction, and early-modern horror, it not only offers chilling passages with an escalating sense of dread and isolation, but also constructs a world horrifying in its implications about mankind…

The Madness of Cthulhu anthologizes a variety of interpretations of Lovecraft’s Mythos, taking readers beyond the dusty-tomes-and-unspeakable-things tropes and demonstrating the imaginative possibilities still present in HPL’s legacy.

Part of that review is quoted on the back of The Madness of Cthulhu, Volume Two, which is kind of cool. The second volume, which contains 14 brand new stories inspired by Lovecraft’s classic At the Mountains of Madness — including stories by Laird Barron, Alan Deam Foster, William F. Nolan, Brian Stableford, and Steve Rasnic Tem — was published by Titan Books on October 20, 2015. It is 297 pages, priced at $15.95, and $5.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by John Jude Palencar. Click on the image above for a bigger version.

Paul Di Filippo Asks if the Simak Renaissance is Finally Here

Paul Di Filippo Asks if the Simak Renaissance is Finally Here

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I Am Crying All Inside-smallLast month I made some noise here at Black Gate about The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak — the long-awaited multi-volume project from Open Road Media. Six volumes have been announced so far, and three were released on October 20.

Over at Locus Online, Paul Di Filippo asks if this is finally the beginning of the Simak Renaissance.

Much as I loved Heinlein’s work, I loved Simak’s more, in what was perhaps a different fashion. If you can imagine both men as uncles, then Heinlein was the loudly dressed, blustering uncle who blew into town once a year from Manhattan, trailing clouds of glory from his exotic exploits and dazzling you with his cosmopolitan ways; whereas Simak was your local bachelor uncle who lived modestly in a cabin and who could always be counted on to fix your bike or take you fishing or console you when your dog died. And he never mentioned that he had a Purple Heart medal tucked away in his sock drawer.

But precisely by having this unassuming nature, in both his personality and on the page, Simak did not generate as many headlines or partisans as did Heinlein. And since his death, it seems to me that his star has unjustifiably faded a bit. There was a laudable attempt a decade ago to get all his stories into print. But the project fell apart after only two (now highly collectible) volumes: Physician to the Universe and Eternity Lost & Other Stories.

Now comes Open Road Media with the stated intention of issuing all of his short fiction in fourteen books. Hooray! Maybe the Simak Renaissance is finally here!

See Paul’s complete article here.

Win a Copy of Ecko Endgame by Danie Ware from Titan Books

Win a Copy of Ecko Endgame by Danie Ware from Titan Books

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Danie Ware’s Ecko series is one of the most talked-about on the market. James Lovegrove calls it “The Matrix meets Game of Thrones,” and Lavie Tidhar noted the opening volume “explodes onto the page with the manic energy of Richard Morgan’s cyberpunk novels, before taking a surprise turn into Thomas Covenant territory.” Now Titan Books has offered us three copies of the latest book, Ecko Endgame, 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 “Ecko Endgame,” and we’ll enter you into the contest.

That’s it! That’s all it takes. Three 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 hefty trade paperback is more than, like, 10 bucks (practically, that means US and Canada).

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.

The Best Of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Volume 1

The Best Of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Volume 1

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The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly-smallIt is hard to believe that David Farney and I started Heroic Fantasy Quarterly in the waning half of 2009. Six years ago; and internet years are like dog years so that’s, well, that’s a long time.

It’s also hard to believe that we’ve been talking about this best-of idea since 2013! We finally did it, though, and made hard choices from our first eight issues to bring out the best work, summoned the incredible skills of artist Justin Sweet, and even brought Black Gate‘s own John O’Neill in on it.

And now it is a real thing, available for pre-order and going live/shipping on Black Friday.

Our table of contents:

Introduction: “Over the Hills and Far Away…and Hiding Right Next to You” by John O’Neill

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