Well, this is a little recursive. As I draft the list of Top Ten BG articles last month, I learn that our most posts in January were… Top Ten lists.

That includes Brandon Crilly’s Top Ten Books I Read in 2016, sitting right at the top of the heap, as well as GeekDad‘s Best Tabletop Games of 2016 (at #2), John DeNardo’s Best of the Best: The Definitive List of 2016’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (#3), and even the Top 50 Black Gate Posts in December (#6).

What can I say? At the start of a new year, everybody seems to want to know what the heck they missed last year.

It wasn’t all about Top Ten lists last month, of course. Coming in at number 4 was Fletcher Vredenburgh’s review of Michael Crichton’s 1976 novel Eaters of the Dead (and the classic film derived from it, The 13th Warrior). Rounding out the Top 5 for the month was Ryan Harvey’s second installment in his survey of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga.

Also on the Top Ten list were Violette Malan’s essay “Retrofitting, And When It Doesn’t Work,” Bob Byrne’s look at a gorgeous new Solar Pons Omnibus, Bob’s affectionate examination of perhaps the finest D&D adventure ever made, “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Temple of Elemental Evil,” and Elizabeth Crowens’s Interview with a Brooklyn Vampire.

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

The Top 50 Black Gate posts in January were:

1. The Top Ten Books I Read in 2016
2. Modular: GeekDad Selects the Best Tabletop Games of 2016
3. John DeNardo on the Best of the Best: The Definitive List of 2016’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy
4. Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton
5. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Pellucidar
6. The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in December
7. Retrofitting, And When It Doesn’t Work
8. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes – A New Solar Pons Omnibus
9. Modular: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About The Temple of Elemental Evil
10. The Poison Apple: Interview with a Brooklyn Vampire

     

11. Modular: The New Mongoose Traveller RPG #0: Transported by Free Trader Beowulf!
12. Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Selects the Best Horror Books of 2016
13. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock is Back With “The Six Thatchers”
14. The Killingest Book I Know: The Twelve Children of Paris by Tim Willocks
15. Oz’s Bag of Holding: My Beef with Lev Grossman’s The Magicians and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials
16. The Complete Carpenter: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
17. Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
18. Andrew Liptak on 16 SF and Fantasy Novels You Don’t Want to Miss in January
19. Modular: Three Viking Age Supplements and One Role-Playing Game
20. Andrew Liptak Selects the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels of 2016

     

21. December Short Story Roundup
22. Goth Chick News: Get Ready, Here Comes Your 2017 Binge List…
23. Jack Kirby’s Fourth World: 45 Years Later
24. Goth Chick News: Game Over Man, Game Over
25. Kirkus Selects the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016
26. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: I’d Rather Be a “Librarian” Than a Disney Princess
27. Modular: Oz’s Bag of Holding: Breaking Out Basic D&D for the Next Generation
28. The Poison Apple: The Paintbrush is as Mighty as the Sword — An Interview With Lissanne Lake
29. Books and Craft: The Power of Point of View
30. New Treasures: Lords of Dyscrasia by S.E. Lindberg

     

31. Silent Screen Swashbucklers, Part 1 of 2: Zorro Makes his Mark!
32. Peplum Populist: Perseus the Invincible (Perseus Against the Monsters)
33. Writing Life: The Arrow Storm
34. The Pastel City by M. John Harrison
35. Visiting the Two Towers in Bologna
36. Etruscan Treasures in Bologna
37. You Live in Pellucidar: The Weird Inner World of Cyrus Teed and the Koreshan Unity
38. Tor.com on the Most Intriguing SF and Fantasy Books of 2017
39. Publishers Weekly Selects the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels of 2016
40. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Let’s Talk About The Dying Detective

     

41. Take a Crash Course in the History of Computer Role Playing in The Ultimate RPG Handbook
42. Check Out the Serial Box Omnibus Collections from Saga Press
43. Modular: How to Introduce Kids to Tabletop Role-Playing #2: Actually GMing Kids
44. Generation Ships and Martian Rebels: Rich Horton on 200 Years to Christmas by J. T. McIntosh and Rebels of the Red Planet by Charles L. Fontenay
45. January 2017 Apex Magazine Now Available
46. Beneath Ceaseless Skies 215 Now Available
47. Star Wars Comic Spin-Offs: Poe Dameron and Doctor Aphra
48. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: George Mann’s Holmes
49. Coming Soon: The Jurassic Chronicles
50. Mad Shadows II: Dorgo the Dowser and The Order of the Serpent by Joe Bonadonna

There were plenty of older articles popular last month as well. The 25 most popular blog posts written before January were:

1. Death Knight Love Story: WMA meets WTF
2. The Scariest Hour in TV History: Space 1999: “Dragon’s Domain”
3. New Treasures: The Library of America Publishes Elmore Leonard
4. Heroic Fantasy with the Sharp Edge of Reality: A Review of The Sacred Band by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
5. Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 5: Teana: 10000 Years Later, Crimson Whale, and The Shamer’s Daughter
6. “Are You Not Still Entertained?”: Gladiator’s 10-Year Oscar Anniversary
7. My Fantasia Festival, Days 5 to 7: Cold in July, The Fatal Encounter, and Huntresses
8. Goth Chick News: Samuel L. Jackson Takes On Japanese OVA – Hold On To Your Butts…
9. The Return of the King (1980)
10. Eccentric in Retrospect: Helen Simpson’s The Woman on the Beast
11. Adventures on Stage: Fantasy Literature’s Missing Link
12. Solitaire Adventure with Victory Point Games
13. The IX by Andrew P. Weston
14. Return to Thieves World in Beyond Sanctuary: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris
15. Tribulations Herculean and Tragic: Beyond Wizardwall by Janet Morris
16. Living it Large: How Larger Than Life Characters Work
17. Adventures In Gaming: The Temple Of the Sea Gods
18. Blowing the Doors Off the Barn: Expanding the Iron Fist Mythos
19. Haunt the House: The Music and Art of Will Houlihan
20. The Series Series: Shieldwall: Barbarians! by M. Harold Page
21. Part Gothic, Part Sword and Sorcery, and Part Horror: Andrew P. Weston’s Hell Bound
22. The IX: Exordium of Tears by Andrew P. Weston
23. Caught Between Rebels and the Empire’s Blackest Magic: Beyond the Veil: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris
24. Vintage Treasures: The Silistra Quartet by Janet Morris
25. Pellucidar on Screen: At the Earth’s Core… The Movie

The Top Black Gate Online Fiction features were:

1. An Excerpt from The Sacred Band by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
2. “Seven Against Hell” by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
3. An excerpt from “Mad Shadows II” by Joe Bonadonna
4. “In the Wake Of Sister Blue” by Mark Rigney
5. An Excerpt from Truck Stop Earth by Michael A. Armstrong
6. “Iron Joan” by ElizaBeth Gilligan
7. “A Holmes Christmas Carol” by Bob Byrne
8. “The Weird of Ironspell” by John R. Fultz
9. “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” by Joe Bonadonna
10. “Awakening” by Judith Berman
11. An excerpt from “The Naturalist: Going to Applewash” by Mark Sumner
12. An Excerpt from The Wall of Storms by Ken Liu
13. “Tsathoggua” by Michael Shea
14. “Godmother Lizard” by C.S.E. Cooney
15. “Queen of Toads” by Joe Bonadonna

The top categories last month were:

1. Editor’s Blog
2. Art of the Genre
3. Books
4. Vintage Treasures
5. Magazines
6. Art
7. Conan
8. Blog Entry
9. Game Reviews
10. New Treasures
11. Comics
12. Role Playing Games
13. Pulp
14. Future Treasures
15. Reviews
16. BG Staff
17. Series Fantasy
18. Goth Chick
19. Essays
20. Fiction

The Top 50 Black Gate blog posts in December are here, and you can see all 97 posts we made in the month of January here.