BG blogger M Harold Page had a fabulous month in December, with three of the top four posts for the month, all dealing with Medieval Worldbuilding:

How to Get From Worldbuilding (or Research) to Story
An Adventurer’s Guide to the Middle Ages: What if There’s No Room at the Inn (or No Inn Whatsoever?)
Three Classic Books for Medieval Worldbuilders and Armchair Time Travellers

Mr. Page has clearly fired the imaginations of all the aspiring medieval novelists in our audience (and managed to keep things fascinating for the rest of us.)

The third most popular artcile for December was a guest post from editor Dominik Parisien, announcing the contents of his upcoming Clockwork Canada anthology. Rounding out the Top 5 was the second installment in William I. Lengeman III’s Star Trek movie rewatch, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

Also on our top ten were two articles on collecting pulp art by Doug Ellis, the newest installment of our vintage paperback series, Collecting Robert E. Heinlein, Sean Stiennon’s review of Robert McCammon’s Swan Song, and Sarah Newton’s detailed review of the new Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls role playing game.

The complete list of Top Articles for December follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles and blog categories for the month.

The Top 50 Black Gate posts in December were:

1. How to Get From Worldbuilding (or Research) to Story
2. An Adventurer’s Guide to the Middle Ages: What if There’s No Room at the Inn (or No Inn Whatsoever?)
3. Cover Reveal: Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction edited by Dominik Parisien
4. Three Classic Books for Medieval Worldbuilders and Armchair Time Travellers
5. Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
6. Hubert Rogers’ Astounding Covers — And His Fascinating Correspondence with Robert A. Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp
7. See Lester Del Rey’s Art Direction to Michael Whelan for A Fighting Man of Mars
8. Collecting Robert A. Heinlein
9. The Wasteland: Swan Song by Robert McCammon
10. Packed Full of Fantasy Goodness: The Deluxe Tunnels and Trolls RPG

     

11. Only War for Christmas: How to Defend Warhammer for Teenage Boys
12. Collecting Karl Edward Wagner
13. Kull and the Quest for Identity
14. Filling in the Gaps in my Education: Watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer for the First Time
15. Review: The Force Awakens (and its Roots in Vintage Space Opera)
16. The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly: Volume 1, 2009-2011 Compiled by the Editors of HFQ
17. David W. Wixon on Editing The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak
18. Five Tactics to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse… And Why They Wouldn’t Work
19. Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “The People of the Black Circle”
20. Exploring Morocco’s Only Stone Circle

     

21. A Biography Worthy of the Creator of D&D: Michael Witwer’s Empire of Imagination
22. A Rose By Any Other Name?
23. Thinking About What Makes The Shining and The Exorcist Work
24. Prehistoric Fantasy from the Days Before the Earth had a Moon: Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga, Part I
25. “Let’s Never Do That Again”: Check Out The First Trailer For Star Trek Beyond
26. Taming the Massive Beast of Pathfinder: An Interview with F. Wesley Schneider
27. The Riddle-Master of Hed by Patricia McKillip
28. Celebrating the 220th Anniversary of the Wold Newton Event
29. Vintage Treasures: Brother Assassin by Fred Saberhagen
30. The Halt And The Lame

     

31. Robert E. Howard: Peering Behind the Veil of Life
32. The Fionavar Tapestry Book 1: The Summer Tree by Guy Gavriel Kay
33. The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol 3
34. Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Q26 Now Available
35. Goth Chick News: Ohio vs Zombie Nativity – Yes, We’re Going There…
36. New Treasures: Penguin Science Fiction Postcards: 100 Book Covers in One Box
37. Fantastic Reference and Non-fiction Books
38. When Mankind Shares the Earth with Vampires, Werewolves, & Trolls: Dean R. Koontz’s The Haunted Earth
39. Goth Chick News: Universal Studios Goes Back to Its Roots and I Should Be Excited, But…
40. Wandering the Worlds of C.S. Lewis, Part I: Boxen

     

41. Vintage Treasures: The Good Stuff by Gardner Dozois/
42. Vintage Treasures: The Queens’ Quarter Trilogy by Midori Snyder
43. Amazing Science Fiction Stories, October 1959: A Retro-Review
44. Down These Mean Streets a Pastiche Writer Goes
45. Goth Chick News: Stop Your Grinnin’ and Drop Your Linen – This is the Holiday Gift You’ve Been Searching For
46. British Museum Presents Egypt: Faith After The Pharaohs
47. The Other Sax Rohmer
48. The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in November
49. Vintage Treasures: Rudy Gutierrez Does Nalo Hopkinson
50. Future Treasures: X’s For Eyes by Laird Barron

There were plenty of older articles popular last month as well. The 20 most popular blog posts written before December were:

1. AD&D Figurines: Youth In a Box?
2. The 2015 Hugo Shortlist, Short Fiction: A Review
3. Heroic Fantasy with the Sharp Edge of Reality: A Review of The Sacred Band by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
4. My Inspiration: Black Canaan
5. The Exploding World of Castles and Crusades
6. Ten Acclaimed Historical Fantasy Novels You Need to Read
7. Challenging the Classics: Questioning the Arbitrary Browsing Mechanism
8. A Red & Pleasant Land
9. Art of the Genre: Top 10 Fantasy Artists of the Past 100 Years
10. An Adventurer’s Guide to the Middle Ages: Town Watch? Where?
11. The Proxy Culture War for the Soul of Middle Earth
12. Goth Chick News: Getting A-head at Airport Security
13. Why I Created Labyrinth Lord
14. Come Into Callahan’s, Said the Spider
15. The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol. 2
16. Art of the Genre: Art of the Iconic Female #5: Princess Leia
17. Frodo Baggins, Lady Galadriel, and the Games of the Mighty
18. A Detailed Explanation
19. Software Review (kind of): Fantasy Map Making with Hexographer
20. Nazi Film Review: Hitlerjunge Quex
21. Return to Thieves World in Beyond Sanctuary: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris
22. A Proposal: An Award for SF Storytelling
23. Tribulations Herculean and Tragic: Beyond Wizardwall by Janet Morris
24. Death Knight Love Story: WMA meets WTF
25. Caught Between Rebels and the Empire’s Blackest Magic: Beyond the Veil: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris

The top categories last month were:

1. Books
2. Blog Entry
3. Vintage Treasures
4. Art of the Genre
5. Art
6. Magazines
7. Conan
8. Comics
9. BG Staff
10. Black Gate Goes to Summer Movies
11. Convention Report
12. Contest
13. Future Treasures
14. Editor’s Blog
15. Pulp
16. Essays
17. Reviews
18. New Treasures
19. Discovering Robert E. Howard
20. News
21. Music

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in November 2015 are here, and you can see all 132 posts we made in the month of December here.