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Month: August 2016

Strange Aeons 19 Now Available

Strange Aeons 19 Now Available

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Strange Aeons 19-smallSeems to me I should be paying more attention to Strange Aeons, a magazine of horror and dark fantasy that mixes comics and graphic narratives with fiction, all in one attractive package. (The editors describe it as “the illegitimate love-child of a hot tryst between Heavy Metal magazine and Weird Tales” — and you must admit, that’s an evocative image.) They’ve produced 19 issues since the Spring of 2010, and yet we’ve somehow managed to overlook them in our regular magazine coverage here at Black Gate. Shameful.

Time to correct this egregious oversight. Issue 19 is now available, and it contains fiction by Kristi Demeester, CM Muller, and Michael Wehunt, and comics by Rob Corless, John Donald Carlucci, and Eric York. Here’s the issue description from the website.

Our magnificent Issue Nineteen is now available!

Our amazing cover is by artist Clint Langley, and it was originally commissioned for a film we were pitching called Sunset. The film never got made, but the cover sure is gorgeous!

52 pages of gorgeous B&W and Color Comics by Rob Corless, John Donald Carlucci, and Eric York! Three Fiction Stories by Kristi Demeester, CM Muller, and Michael Wehunt! Articles, Columns, Reviews and so much more can be found waiting inside, including an interview with the maniac behind the Dreams in the Witch House rock opera, Mike Dalager!

And as an added bonus, a collectible Art Card from the incredible Mohloco!

Check out the full details, including sample pages, below.

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Proceeding in the Pulp Tradition by Writing Five Novels a Year: A Conversation With Guy Haley

Proceeding in the Pulp Tradition by Writing Five Novels a Year: A Conversation With Guy Haley

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Guy Haley is the author of The Emperor’s Railroad and The Ghoul King, the first two books in The Dreaming Cities from Tor.com Publishing. The tales of the fortified city-states that still stand a thousand years after global war devastated the environment and a zombie-like plague wiped out much of humanity, they take place in a world of constant conflict, superstition, machine relics, mutant creatures, and strange resurrected prehistoric beasts that roam the land. Learn more on our recent contest page.

But as you’ll see in my conversation with Guy below, he’s written more than just these two books — a great deal more. His other works include two Richards and Klein robot detective novels from Angry Robot, the space opera Crash, and a wide assortment of popular books in the Warhammer setting, including Baneblade (2013), The Death of Integrity (2013), Valedor (2015), The Rise of the Horned Rat (2015), Throneworld (May 2016), Death of the Old World (June 2016; an omnibus collection also featuring BG author Josh Reynolds), and no less than five more scheduled for publication before the end of the year:

Pharos (August)
Crusaders of Dorn (September)
Shadowsword (October)
Realmgate Wars: Ghal Maraz (also with Josh, coming in November)
The Beheading (also in November)

Yes, you counted that right: that’s a total of nine books appearing between April and November of this year; seven from Black Library and two from Tor.com Publishing. How does he do it?? Let’s find out.

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B&N Points You to the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy in August

B&N Points You to the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy in August

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Spiderlight Adrian Tchaikovsky-smallOver at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Jeff Somers has announced his picks for the most intriguing SF and fantasy books of the month, and it’s a terrific list.

It includes several books we’ve already showcased here at Black Gate — including The Indranan War by K.B. Wagers, The Forgetting Moon, by Brian Lee Durfee, and Ghost Talkers, by Mary Robinette Kowal — plus new books from Beth Cato, N.K. Jemisin, China Miéville, Faith Hunter, and many more.

He also recommends the latest book from Adrian Tchaikovsky, Spiderlight, on sale today from Tor.com Publishing.

Best-known for his remarkable, innovative, and expansive 10-book Shadows of the Apt series, which crafted an epic fantasy landscape modeled on the real-world characteristics of various types of insects, Tchaikovsky delivers this smart, standalone fantasy, which jumps off from what could be viewed as a clichéd and overdone premise: a standard-issue role-playing party (thief, ranger, wizard, cleric, etc.) following the complicated strictures of a prophecy in order to defeat a dark lord — a prophecy that involves stealing a fang from the Spider Queen and forcing her to lead them to his lair. But Tchaikovsky then pivots to introduce the true protagonist: a spider with an unpronounceable name who is transformed into human form to be the party’s guide. From there, the author brilliantly subverts, inverts, and toys with the common tropes of fantasy literature. The end result is one of the most unique and interesting new fantasies of the year.

See the complete list here.

New Treasures: The Fisherman by John Langan

New Treasures: The Fisherman by John Langan

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The Fisherman John Langan-small The Fisherman John Langan-back-small

John Langan has had a stellar career. His first collection, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Prime, 2008) was nominated for a Stoker Award, and his debut novel House of Windows (2010) was warmly received. But it was his second collection, The Wide Carnivorous Sky and Other Monstrous Geographies (Hippocampus Press, 2013), that really put him on the map, with plenty of folks praising it as one of the best collections of the year.

His second novel The Fisherman has all the markings of a breakout book. A novel of cosmic horror disguised as a tale of outdoor survival, The Fisherman looks like one of the strongest horror novels of the year. Laird Barron calls it “an epic, yet intimate, horror novel. Langan channels M. R. James, Robert E. Howard, and Norman Maclean. What you get is A River Runs through It… Straight to hell.”

The Fisherman was published by Word Horde — who’ve been doing some exceptional work recently — on June 30, 2016. It is 282 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Albert Bierstadt. Check out the book video and more here.

Learning the Uncanny Arts: The Secrets of the Uncanny Magazine Covers

Learning the Uncanny Arts: The Secrets of the Uncanny Magazine Covers

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Uncanny_Issue_Four_Cover-smaller Uncanny Magazine May June 2016-smaller

One of the things we’ve learned here at Uncanny Magazine is that people really like our covers. Which is awesome. It means our evil plans :ahem: I mean, our specific vision of what we want for the magazine is working! This is why many of the backer levels of our currently running Uncanny Magazine Year Three Kickstarter include postcards or prints of our art.

For example, Tran Nguyen’s “Traveling to a Distant Day” won a Spectrum 23 Gold Award and is a finalist for a 2016 Chesley Award for Best Cover Illustration. Galen Dara’s “Bubbles and Blast Off” was super popular on Twitter, to the point where people demanded prints. We worked with Galen to make them happen in our Uncanny Magazine store. (There may be something even cooler going on with the Kickstarter in relation to that. Stay tuned.)

Black Gate thought it would be interesting for us to explain how we select our Uncanny Magazine covers.

So, without further ado…

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Pathfinder Meets Lovecraft: Starspawn by Wendy N. Wagner

Pathfinder Meets Lovecraft: Starspawn by Wendy N. Wagner

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Wendy N. Wagner is the Managing Editor for Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines, as well as an editor for the fabulous Destroy series of anthologies, including Women Destroy Science Fiction, Women Destroy Fantasy, and Queers Destroy Science Fiction. She’s also the author of one previous Pathfinder Tales novel, Skinwalkers.

The sequel to Skinwalkers, Starspawn, will be published next week by Tor Books, and follows the notorious pirate Jendara as she returns to the cold northern isles of her home to settle down and raise her young son. When a mysterious tsunami wracks her island’s shore, she and her fearless crew must sail out to explore the strange island that’s risen from the sea floor. The marketing copy describes the novel as follows:

From Hugo Award winner Wendy N. Wagner comes a sword-swinging adventure in the tradition of H. P. Lovecraft, set in the award-winning world of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.

Pathfinder meets Lovecraft? That’s definitely worth checking out.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Western Noir – Hell on Wheels

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Western Noir – Hell on Wheels

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Back in November of 2011, AMC debuted a gritty new western, Hell on Wheels. Anson Mount played Cullen Bohannon, a former Confederate soldier out for revenge against the Union soldiers who had killed his wife and son and burned his farm. His pursuit takes him to the camp of the Union Pacific Railroad, which is headed across the central plains under the leadership of Thomas Durrant (Colm Meany: O’Brien of Star Trek: The Next Generation fame).

While the series starts out as a revenge tale, Bohannon abandons that quest after he kills the wrong man and instead focuses on helping build the Transcontinental Railroad. The series becomes the story of the various employees and camp followers who move along as the laying of track progresses: the mobile community is ‘Hell on wheels.’

I’m writing about this series, which wrapped up weekend before last, because it is a Western Noir: And a darn good one. I had never seen Mount in anything before, but I’m telling you, he was made for this part. He’s the protagonist, but he’s not a white-hatted cowboy. Roy Rogers need not apply. He develops his own code of honor as the series progresses, but he’s a ‘get it done guy’ who rises from swinging a pick to the most important person in the Transcontinental’s story. And as he demonstrates many times, he isn’t afraid to use a gun.

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