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Month: August 2016

Summer Short Story Roundup: Part Two

Summer Short Story Roundup: Part Two

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oie_2363515CoUyIq9mIt turns out there were lots and lots of really good horror and science fiction short stories published this summer. Not as much swords & sorcery as I would have liked, but a bunch of good stories nonetheless. This week I’m going to give you a glance at roundup regular, Grimdark Magazine. I’m also going to take a look at two mags new to the roundup: the recently revived Weirdbook (read about the relaunch here), and newcomer Red Sun Magazine. You can read last week’s reviews of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, and Cirsova at this link.

Right from the gitgo, I knew Grimdark Magazine #8 was going to be a “disappointment.” In the foreword, Editor Adrian Collins wrote “Issue #8 has a focus on sci-fi fiction, something I feel has been a bit lacking from GdM over the first two years (can you believe it’s been two years?).” It’s not like I hate sci-fi (though I find myself reading practically none at all anymore), it’s just that after last week’s thunderous blast of adrenaline-pumping, sword-swinging, monster-killing action, that’s what I was hoping for more of.

In its short life, Collins has made GdM a consistently exciting publication, and GdM #8‘s two sci-fi stories are not bad at all. The first, “Viva Longevicus” by Brandon Daubs, is about genetically engineered pets going very, very wrong. It’s told by a colonel in the U.S.S. AeroCorps sent to investigate an infestation on a colonial world. A monster hunt on an alien world just isn’t the most original plot, but if it’s told with verve and intensity (and just the right amount of crazy), it can be a blast to happily while away a few minutes on. This is one of those.

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Fantastic, August and September 1964: A Retro-Review

Fantastic, August and September 1964: A Retro-Review

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Fantastic Stories of Imagination August 1964-small Fantastic Stories of Imagination September 1964-small

My most recent forays into Cele Goldsmith Lalli’s editing career have concentrated on Amazing, so here’s a look at a couple of issues of Fantastic. These two issues include a complete John Jakes serial, so I’ll consider them together.

During this period Fantastic was subtitled “Stories of Imagination,” and though it concentrated on fantasy it also published some SF. (The letter column, when one existed, occasionally included complaints about this, to which the response was “sometimes there just isn’t enough good fantasy.”) Fantastic was also thin on features, usually the only one being an editorial from Norman Lobsenz and a brief Coming Next Month blurb. The August editorial is about psychic research, particularly that of the Greek scientist Angelos Tanagras. I thought Lobsenz was a bit too credulous. The September issue’s editorial complains about the quality of SF on TV: instead of adaptations of Isaac Asimov’s robot stories we got Living Doll, and instead of The Martian Chronicles we got My Favorite Martian.

August’s cover is by Ed Emshwiller, with interiors by Emsh, Virgil Finlay, and George Schelling. Robert Adragna does the September cover, and the interiors are by Adragna, Finlay, Emsh, and Schelling.

The stories, then.

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Alaric’s Biggest Secret: “The Desert of Vanished Dreams” by Phyllis Eisenstein

Alaric’s Biggest Secret: “The Desert of Vanished Dreams” by Phyllis Eisenstein

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In the Red Lord's Reach and Born to Exile Phyllis Eisenstein-small

Phyllis Eisenstein’s wandering minstrel Alaric, one of the most beloved characters in modern fantasy, appeared in eight short stories in Fantasy & Science Fiction between 1978-1998, and in two novels: Born to Exile (1978) and In the Red Lord’s Reach (1989). He recently made a long-overdue reappearance in George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’ massive 2014 anthology Rogues, in the novelette “The Caravan to Nowhere.”

He’s reappeared again, this time in the new novelette “The Desert of Vanished Dreams” in the latest issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science, still on sale at better bookshops. In honor of the occasion, F&SF has interviewed Phyllis on their website, and Phyllis reveals several secrets about the magical world she’s been nurturing for nearly four decades.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dungeon! – A New Kind of Board Game

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Dungeon! – A New Kind of Board Game

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Dungeon_boardTSR’s Dungeon! came out in 1975, just one year after Gary Gygax revolutionized gaming with Dungeons and Dragons.

The ground-breaking board game is still an excellent introduction to fantasy gaming over forty years later. The board represents a dungeon, divided into six areas (representing levels) of varying difficulty, differentiated by color.  There are monster and treasure cards for level and the harder the level, the tougher the monsters and of course, the greater the treasures.

The character classes have been changed over the years, but the player chooses from a Rogue, Cleric, Fighter and Wizard and each class needs to collect a certain amount of gold pieces (earned from treasure cards), ranging from 10,000 to 30,000. Also, each hero class performs at its best in certain levels. So you don’t want to take a Cleric to level six, but your Wizard is never going to win by traipsing around level one.

When a hero enters a room or a chamber, they draw a monster card (which might also be a trap). Every monster has a value assigned to each hero (as well as two spell values for the Wizard). The player rolls two six-sided dice and wins on a tie or greater. The monster is dead and the player gets a treasure card. If the Hero loses the fight, one of five things happens, ranging from nothing to dying and losing all of their treasure. The monster and any treasures remain in the room, waiting for another hero to enter.

Heroes explore until they gain the required amount of treasure for their class. The first Hero to make it back to the starting chamber with the requisite treasure wins the game. Bad things can happen on the way back to the starting chamber and the Hero may no longer have enough treasure. And once in awhile, it becomes a race to the finish.

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New Treasures: The Lure of Devouring Light by Michael Griffin

New Treasures: The Lure of Devouring Light by Michael Griffin

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The Lure of Devouring Light-small The Lure of Devouring Light-back-small

Ross E. Lockhart’s Word Horde press has done some darned impressive horror volumes. Just counting the ones we’ve covered recently:

The Fisherman by John Langan
Mr. Suicide, Nicole Cushing
Cthulhu Fhtagn!, edited by Ross E. Lockhart
Vermilion by Molly Tanzer
The Children of Old Leech, edited by Ross E. Lockhart and Justin Steele

Yeah, that’s a pretty good list. A list like that wins you some serious credibility. So when Word Horde offers us an intriguing new debut collection from someone I’ve never heard of, I think it behooves us to pay attention. Michael Griffin’s The Lure of Devouring Light has been called “A solid outing from a rising star in horror and dark fantasy” by Publishers Weekly, and Hellnotes says “It doesn’t get more recommended than this.”

The Lure of Devouring Light was published by Word Horde on April 30, 2016. It is 336 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital version. The cover art is by Jarek Kubicki. Read more at the Word Horde website.

The 2016 Hugo Award Winners

The 2016 Hugo Award Winners

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The Fifth Season Jemisin-smallIt was a delight to be in the audience in Kansas City for the 2016 Hugo Awards. I was sitting next to Rich and MaryAnne Horton, and we thoroughly enjoyed both the pre-show and the presentations.

There’s a lengthy list of winners, so let’s get to it. The complete list follows.

Best Novel

The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit US)

Best Novella

Binti, Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)

Best Novelette

“Folding Beijing”, Hao Jingfang (Uncanny 1-2/15)

Best Short Story

“Cat Pictures Please”, Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, 1/15)

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Black Gate Receives an Alfie Award from George R.R. Martin

Black Gate Receives an Alfie Award from George R.R. Martin

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George RR Martin John O'Neill Alfie Award-small

George RR Martin and John O’Neill

Yesterday, while I was walking through the crowded halls of Worldcon in the Kansas City Convention Center, I was given an invitation to the Hugo Losers party, courtesy of the party’s distinguished host, George RR Martin. I was quite flattered, as Black Gate was not even up for a Hugo (we declined the nomination, as we did last year, to make room for another nominee on the ballot), but didn’t think much more about it.

The Hugo Losers party is the hottest ticket of the convention, as I soon discovered. George personally hands out the Alfie Awards to those Hugo losers whom he feels (quite rightly, I think) were unjustly robbed of an award by slate shenanigans. And this year he spared no expense to do it in style, renting out the Midland Theater, hiring a band, and plying hundreds of guests with fabulous food and drink. The Awards themselves are gorgeous, constructed of vintage hood ornaments, in honor of the design inspiration for the first Hugo Awards.

George funds and hosts the awards, but the Alfie’s are in truth a fan award… the winners are determined by the results of the Hugo voting. But after the first few were awarded, George announced that the Alfie committee had the right to give out special awards. And as the sole member of the committee, he’d decided to give a special award this year to recognize one publication “for integrity” in declining a Hugo nomination two years in a row. Without further ado, George announced the award was to be given to Black Gate, and I was called to the stage to accept it.

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Need Some Cthulhu?

Need Some Cthulhu?

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AP_Sanity1Way back in 2003, The Shackled City began appearing in the pages of Dungeon magazine. Spread over twelve installments, it let characters adventure in a connected storyline from first to twentieth level and really, it was the first incarnation of the modern Adventure Path. Paizo followed this up with two others, Age of Worms and Savage Tide. A post about the real evolution of the Adventure Path, going back to the ‘Giants’ modules from TSR, would be a pretty interesting read. But that’s not this post.

Paizo lost Dungeon when Wizards of the Coast brought it back in-house. As we all know, Paizo went from developing 3.5 materials to the massively successful Pathfinder RPG. And at the heart of Pathfinder has been the Adventure Path: a six module, linked storyline, written by multiple authors, covering levels 1 to 20. Rise of the Runelords kicked things off in 2007-2008 (I highly recommend the Anniversary Edition ) and later this month, Paizo’s nineteenth Adventure Path comes out.

That’s 114 modules of adventuring. Wow. They range all over the Pathfinder world of Golarion and really showcase what a fantastic campaign world it is. I put it up there with the Forgotten Realms as my favorite (I’m not a big Greyhawk guy, myself).

Bet you wondered if I was ever gonna pay off the post’s title, didn’t you? Well, I am. Here’s a description of Strange Aeons:

In a distant land polluted by an alien menace from beyond the stars, a great cancer grows within the earth. As its tendrils reach out through the dreams of those who learn and study its existence, a sinister cult grows more active in preparing the way for a devastation that will destroy more than the minds of would-be heroes. Can the adventures reclaim lost memories in time to stop the advance of a cataclysmic contagion that could threaten all of Golarion? Can they resist the mind-shattering truths revealed by the Yellow Sign, and the monstrous force it symbolizes? The Strange Aeons Adventure Path pits the heroes against the cosmic horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos, with new monsters, mind-shattering terrors, and explorations far beyond the known lands of Golarion.

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August Issue of The Dark Now on Sale

August Issue of The Dark Now on Sale

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The Dark August 2016-smallIt’s a little ironic that The Dark finally makes a long-anticipated leap from quarterly to monthly publication in May… and then I promptly miss the next two issues. It doesn’t really help that the magazine is published every month if I only make time to read it once a quarter. (Of course, I’m still reading fiction at Tor.com from back in April, so I suppose everything’s relative.) Let’s just cut our losses and jump back in with the August issue, mm’kay?

The Dark is edited by Sean Wallace, with assistance by Jack Fisher. Here’s the Table of Contents for issue #15, cover-dated August 2015.

“Floodwater” by Kristi DeMeester
“Wheatfield with Crows” by Steve Rasnic Tem (from Dark World: Ghost Stories, 2013)
“Some Pictures of Monsters” by Rhonda Eikamp
“Hairwork” by Gemma Files (from She Walks in Shadows, 2015)

You can read issues free online, or help support the magazine by buying 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 — or subscribe for just $1.99 per issue.

If you enjoy the magazine you can contribute to their new Patreon account. Read the complete announcement, and sign up here. You can also support The Dark by buying their books, reviewing stories, or even just leaving comments.

Read the August issue here, catch up on their June or July issues, or see their complete back issue catalog here. The August cover is by Tomislav Tikulin. We last covered The Dark with the May issue.

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

Future Treasures: The Call by Peadar O’Guilin

Future Treasures: The Call by Peadar O’Guilin

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The Call Peadar O'Guilin-small The Call Peadar O'Guilin-back-small

Peadar O’Guilin was one of the most popular and prolific contributors to the print version of Black Gate. His first story for us was “The Mourning Trees” (BG 5), followed by “Where Beauty Lies in Wait” (BG 11) and “The Evil Eater” (BG 13), which Serial Distractions called “a lovely little bit of Lovecraftian horror that still haunts me to this day.” A fourth story, “The Dowry,” appeared as part of our Black Gate Online Fiction catalog.

Check out the podcast version of “The Evil Eater” on Pseudopod, or download Where Beauty Lies In Wait, a free e-book collecting a dozen of Peadar’s short stories, including his Black Gate tales, here.

Peadar’s first novel, The Inferior, was published to terrific reviews in 2008; it was followed by the next two novels in The Bone World Trilogy, The Deserter (2012) and The Volunteer (2013). His last book was Forever in the Memory of God and Other Stories, which Sarah Avery called “old-school weird fiction, Clark Ashton Smith style.”

Peadar’s newest novel is easily one of the most anticipated novels of the year here at Black Gate‘s rooftop headquarters. A unique blend of fantasy, horror, and folkore from one of the top writers in the field, The Call is this fall’s must-read fantasy epic.

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