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Month: May 2016

SF Signal Goes Dark

SF Signal Goes Dark

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SF Signal logoWhen I declined our 2016 Hugo Award nomination last week, I wrote:

A great many publications I deeply respect were completely swept aside by the Rabid Puppy ballot, including John DeNardo’s SF Signal… By giving up our very slim chance at winning, we can give another deserving publication a shot. That seems like a fair exchange to me.

SF Signal has been one of my favorite sites for years. So you can imagine my distress when I read John DeNardo’s last post yesterday, announcing the long-running site was shutting down.

When we started SF Signal in 2003, it was because we loved speculative fiction. Having a blog allowed us to share that love with other fans. We never dreamed it would have grown like it has… It’s been quite a ride.

But all good things come to an end.

It was a very hard decision to make, but we have decided to close down SF Signal. The reason is boringly simple: time. As the blog has grown, so has its demands for our attention. That is time we would rather spend with our families. We considered scaling back posts, but it felt like SF Signal would only be a shadow of its former self. So yes, it feels sudden, but a “cold turkey” exit seems like the right thing to do.

The site has been a fabulous resource for SF and fantasy fans for 13 years, and will be very much missed. John and his staff are looking for a good place to archive the site after the first week of June. If you have any suggestion, let them know.

One More Time(Piece)

One More Time(Piece)

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Robinson Kill EditorIn my last post I talked about John D. MacDonald’s The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything, and today I’d like to take a look at Spider Robinson’s homage to that classic story, Kill the Editor.

I should begin by telling you that Kill the Editor was published separately as a limited edition (1991) but also appears as the first two thirds of his longer Lady Slings the Booze (1992), which is in itself a follow-up (avoiding the dreaded “s” word) to Callahan’s Lady. In Lady Slings Robinson tips his hat to several other mystery/crime writers in his acknowledgements, but it’s MacDonald’s watch that interests me here.

As you’ll recall if you read my last post, Kirby Winter inherited a watch that would stop time for the person holding it. A ton of other people wanted to get his secret from him – most without knowing exactly what the secret was – and defending himself and defeating the bad guys constitutes the plot of that story. (Or the plot of pretty much any story, I suppose.)

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Goth Chick News: Is There Anything Creepier Than a Doll? Let’s Help John Find Out…

Goth Chick News: Is There Anything Creepier Than a Doll? Let’s Help John Find Out…

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Ann the Haunted Doll

Alright yes – clowns are probably creepier.

But this little gem will probably give you the willies just the same.

The channel, Destination America (home to John Zaffis’s possessed-object show Haunted Collector) and The Lineup (a website dedicated to “murder and mayhem”) have teamed up to provide you the opportunity to be a ghost voyeur 24/7 until midnight on May 10th.

So here’s the deal.

Once upon a time back in the early 1900’s there was this little 13-year-old girl named Ann, who was being treated for tuberculosis at Waverly Hills Sanatorium, in Louisville, KY. Now Waverly Hills comes with a whole lot of its own paranormal baggage to begin with since during the time it was in full operation, the idea of a “rest-cure” for patients in a place like this was in actuality a certain death sentence. The building currently holds the title of “one of the most haunted places on earth” and hosts an endless stream of paranormal investigations and television crews.

But back to little Ann…

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The Series Series: Guile by Constance Cooper

The Series Series: Guile by Constance Cooper

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Guille with Constance CooperGuile begins with the girl, but here we must begin with the town.

First, posit a dream-logic variation on Louisiana, a region of lovely old towns sinking inexorably into swamp, linked along their river by villages of stilted cabins. People here live by their river, inevitably — subsistence fishing is the most common livelihood — but the river can’t be trusted. Not just because it floods, but because of the mysteries it carries from dangerous lands upstream.

Because this is a dream-logic Louisiana, the pollution the river carries is not a thousand miles of industrial effluent, but the residual magic of a civilization that collapsed long ago. It’s a pervasive, contaminating magic, full of advantages for those who understand it — but it also breaks down the dividing lines between humans, beasts, and objects. People cope poorly when such boundaries get blurred, so even though the effort to police them is futile, policing them nonetheless is one of the principal priorities of this world’s customs. The heroine’s high town relatives are what you might get if H.P. Lovecraft and his prissy Providence aunts had made their respectable home just a mile from a slumful of Deep Ones.

The river might make a tool so intent on the task it was cast for that anyone who touches it can do nothing else. It might warp the bodies of divers who gather old artifacts to sell, webbing their fingers and gilling their throats. Animals who narrowly avoid drowning in the river emerge in a new kind of danger, endowed with human intelligence and speech, to the sometimes violent horror of actual humans. And minds contaminated by the magic can detect the magic, come to recognize its forms and functions, and use it where they find it, while those who’ve kept clean remain magic-blind.

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New Treasures: Exile by Martin Owton

New Treasures: Exile by Martin Owton

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Exile Martin Owton-smallMartin Owton’s stories for Black Gate include the funny and suspenseful contemporary fantasy “A Touch of Crystal” (co-written with Gaie Sebold), in BG 9, and “The Mist Beyond the Circle,” in which a band of desperate men pursue the slave traders who stole their families, across cold barrows where a dread thing sleeps (BG 14).

So I was very inrigued to see his debut novel Exile arrive last month. Exile is described as a fast-moving tightly-plotted fantasy adventure story with a strong thread of romance, and it’s the first volume of The Nandor Tales. Here’s the full description.

Aron of Darien, raised in exile after his homeland is conquered by a treacherous warlord, makes his way in the world on the strength of his wits and skill with a sword. Both are sorely tested when he is impressed into the service of the Earl of Nandor to rescue his heir from captivity in the fortress of Sarazan. The rescue goes awry. Aron and his companions are betrayed and must flee for their lives. Pursued by steel and magic, they find new friends and old enemies on the road that leads, after many turns, to the city of the High King. There Aron must face his father’s murderer before risking everything in a fight to the death with the deadliest swordsman in the kingdom.

The cover boasts a terrific quote from no less an illustrious personage than BG author and occasional blogger Peadar Ó Guilín, author of The Inferior and the upcoming The Call:

A wonderful story of intrigue, romance and duels, brushed, here and there, by the fingers of a goddess.

Exile was published by Phantasia/Tickety Boo Press on April 15, 2016. It is 303 pages, priced at just $2.99 for the digital version. Black Gate says check it out.

The Arms and Armor Collection of the Museo Cerralbo, Madrid

The Arms and Armor Collection of the Museo Cerralbo, Madrid

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DSC_2184

The armory doubled as the reception room. The first thing visitors see
is the Marquis’ coat of arms flanked by these two fine suits of armor.

Madrid is filled with museums. While most visitors see the “Golden Triangle” of art museums consisting of El Prado, La Reina Sofia, and El Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, there are dozens of other museums, some big, some small, that are well worth a look.

One is the Museo Cerralbo, the former mansion of the Marquis de Cerralbo. Enrique de Aguilera y Gamboa (1845-1922), 17th Marquis of Cerralbo, was an avid collector of art and antiquities and stuffed his grandiose city home with his purchases. The Marquis did more than simply collect, he was also an active archaeologist and did much to advance the study of prehistory in Spain. Of greatest interest to Black Gate readers is the impressive collection of medieval and Renaissance arms and armor.

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The Iron Dragon’s Daughter: A Wholly Biased Review

The Iron Dragon’s Daughter: A Wholly Biased Review

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The-Iron-Dragons-Daughter-smallAh, The Iron Dragon’s Daughter. John O’Neill asked me for a review a few weeks ago, and I thought, “Really? You want me to be objective when she and I are so very much in love?”

Because it is love, you know? And it burns hot enough to turn all negative comments to ash.

I’ve driven friends away with this obsession. “What do you see in The Iron Dragon’s Daughter?” they ask. “She’s so incoherent. She has practically no… no character.”

Yes, all right, all right. We’re talking about a book here. I knew that. Ink and paper, rather than flesh and bone. Born — apologies! — published in 1993. To some, like myself, it became a classic, but others greeted it with bewilderment and it has collected a slew (31%) of apathetic reviews on sites like Amazon.

The book has flaws, you see? It takes the type of liberties that would have most sane reviewers flinging stars away like wasps found on a beloved child.

“Where’s the plot?” they cry.

“Why is the main character so bland?”

Both of these accusations ring true. Michael Swanwick’s story does have an arc that flows from the first page to the last, but rather than a rushing torrent, what we have here meanders across an exotic plain of wonders, leaving half-finished tales behind like so many oxbow lakes.

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Future Treasures: Roses and Rot by Kat Howard

Future Treasures: Roses and Rot by Kat Howard

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Roses and Rot-smallI enjoy a good fairy-tale retelling, especially those written with a modern sensibility — and a dark edge. Kat Howard’s debut novel, selected by Publishers Weekly as a Best Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror Novel of Summer 2016, looks like it fits my criteria nicely.

The marketing for Roses & Rot includes an enviable blurb from Neil Gaiman (“Kat Howard is a remarkable young writer”), and the promise that its main characters, Imogen and her sister Marin, find themselves living in a fairy tale as the story unfolds. But which fairy tale? Ah, that’s part of the mystery.

A prestigious artists’ retreat holds dark secrets as desire for art and love are within grasp for Imogen and her sister, Marin, but at a terrible price.

What would you sacrifice for everything you ever dreamed of?

Imogen has grown up reading fairy tales about mothers who die and make way for cruel stepmothers. As a child, she used to lie in bed wishing that her life would become one of these tragic fairy tales because she couldn’t imagine how a stepmother could be worse than her mother now. As adults, Imogen and her sister Marin are accepted to an elite post-grad arts program — Imogen as a writer and Marin as a dancer. Soon enough, though, they realize that there’s more to the school than meets the eye. Imogen might be living in the fairy tale she’s dreamed about as a child, but it’s one that will pit her against Marin if she decides to escape her past to find her heart’s desire.

Roses and Rot will be published by Saga Press on May 17, 2016. It is 307 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover, and $7.99 for the digital version.

April 2016 Apex Magazine Now Available

April 2016 Apex Magazine Now Available

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Apex Magazine April 2016-smallI love Sarah Zar’s cover to Apex #83 (at right; click for bigger version); and the contents look pretty good, too. Jason Sizemore gives us the complete scoop in his editorial.

This month we’re publishing only two works of original fiction, because both are lengthy pieces, totaling nearly 14,000 words combined, and our goal is to publish around 12,000 words of original fiction each month. In Andrew Neil Gray’s “The Laura Ingalls Experience,” a mech takes a simulated adventure to the American frontier of the 1800s. A search for self in a hollow world makes for poignant story. “The Teratologist’s Brother” by Brandon H. Bell is a prime example of the type of world/unsettling SF Apex Magazine strives to publish. Part dystopia, part Lovecraftian, you will be piecing the puzzles of this story together long after you finish reading it.

Former Apex Magazine editor and frequent contributor Catherynne M. Valente returns to our pages (after a too-lengthy absence) with “The Quidnunx.” This novelette reprint is a masterful example of world building and creating something that is both entirely alien and entirely beautiful. Geoffrey Girard, author of the upcoming Apex Publications collection, first communions, gives us a taste of his collection by sharing the story “Collecting James” with the Apex Magazine readers. Having the story fresh in my mind, I can honestly say if this one doesn’t make you squirm, then you’re a tougher person than I.

For our nonfiction selections, we have two interviews. Russell Dickerson talks with our cover artist Sarah Zar. Andrea Johnson questions author Andrew Neil Grey. Finally, rounding out the issue are poems by John Yu Branscum, Michael VanCalbergh, Jeremy Paden, and Craig Finlay. Our podcast this month is “The Teratologist’s Brother” by Brandon H. Bell.

Here’s the complete TOC, with links to all the free content.

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Star Trek Continues Fundraiser

Star Trek Continues Fundraiser

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trek continues crewThe final days of the newest Star Trek Continues fundraiser are upon us. If you haven’t seen my rave reviews of some of the previous episodes, go take a look — and then drop by their site and watch some of the episodes!

If you’re a fan of the original Star Trek television show, you owe it to yourself to go watch these loving recreations  made by extremely talented volunteers. You’ll swear that these are the same sets, and you’ll swear that most of these scripts were found in the file cabinet of D.C. Fontana or Gene L. Coon.

Last year’s fund raiser (or KIRKstarter, heh) got the funds for a few more episodes AND an engineering room set, which is now complete (you can see a virtual tour on this page). The new fundraiser will help pay for more episodes, rent at the facility where they’re filming the episodes, and pay for some expensive post production on one of the episodes they’ve just finished filming.

If this sounds up your alley (or in your sector) don’t delay. There are only a few days left to help out.