Good to see Star Trek is still enormously popular with our readers. The most widely read post at Black Gate last month was William I. Lengeman III’s review of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, the latest installment in his ongoing Star Trek Re-Watch (his review of ST III was #2 last month).

Or maybe we’re just old. The most popular category last month was Vintage Treasures (that’s my favorite too!) When I get old enough, my eyesight will fade enough that I can’t read books, and then what will it be? Maybe Old Time Radio? That’ll be fun.

Number 2 on the list was our announcement on Black Gate‘s Hugo nomination, followed by M Harold Page’s article on Worldbuilding in the Warhammer 40K Universe, and Sean McLachlan on Vintage Trash: Reel Wild Cinema (Vintage again! We are old). Rounding out the Top Five last month was M Harold Page’s review of All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World.

The complete list of Top Articles for April 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 April were:

1. Star Trek Movie Rewatch: Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)
2. Black Gate Nominated For a Hugo Award
3. How to Worldbuild a Good Sandbox: Four Rules from the 40K Universe
4. Vintage Trash: Reel Wild Cinema Free Online (and Legal!)
5. The Dungeon Master’s Guide to the Middle Ages? (Review: All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World)
6. A Tale of Two Covers: Ellen Kushner on Basilisk
7. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: John Cleese as Holmes – Take One
8. Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s The Big Book of Science Fiction Will be One of the Largest Anthologies the Genre Has Seen
9. Vintage Trash: I Was A Teeny-Bopper For The CIA by Ted Mark
10. Vintage Treasures: The Riverworld Series by Philip Jose Farmer

     

11. Making Myth in a Digital Alexandria
12. Vintage Treasures: Journeys of the Catechist by Alan Dean Foster
13. Cirsova and Pulp Literature
14. Meeting Your Heroes
15. Canadian Steampunk: Chatting with Anthologist and Editor Dominik Parisien
16. More Mogollon Memories: Jack Kirby’s Monsters and the Mogollon Monster Live on the Rim
17. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Meet Tony Hillerman
18. Storming (Err…. Escaping) The Temple of Elemental Evil
19. The Thing In the Lower Rack: A Tale of Truly Lovecraftian Experience
20. Vintage Treasures: The Demon Breed by James H. Schmitz

     

21. The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth
22. Life During Wartime for Revived Pulp Characters
23. The Girl The Gold Watch And Everything
24. Check Out the Teaser Trailer for Marvel’s Doctor Strange
25. Here Come the Replicants! – Blade Runner 2 Moved Up
26. Series Fantasy: The Dagger and the Coin by Daniel Abraham
27. Sci-ficionados: Our Insatiable Hunger for Stories, and What it Means for the Human Race
28. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Ronald Howard Dons the Deerstalker
29. The Exhumation of Myra Maynard
30. Deep Space Scavengers, Pirates, and a Space Witch: Rich Horton on Great Science Fiction Adventures

     

31. Ancient Murders and Eerie Late-Night Funerals: The House by the Churchyard by Sheridan Le Fanu
32. Vintage Treasures: Sorcerer’s Son by Phyllis Eisenstein
33. Galaxy Science Fiction, April 1953: A Retro-Review
34. The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in March
35. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Multiple Personalities of Omniscient 3rd Person: Spotlight on “Head-Hopper”
36. Vintage Treasures: Moons of Triopus by John Rankine
37. A Helluva Detour: The Mysterious Island
38. Pirates, Weather Sorcery, and Desperate Nautical Adventure: The Drowning Eyes by Emily Foster
39. The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: The Navajo Sherlock Holmes – Joe Leaphorn
40. Goth Chick News: Doctor Sleep Gets the Hollywood Treatment

     

41. Brederode: A 14th Century Castle in the Netherlands
42. Watching the Prince of Darkness Do His Work: Hard to be a God by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
43. Capturing the Elusive Nifft the Lean
44. March Short Story Roundup
45. Running with the Post-Apocalyptic Dogs: An Interview with Comic Creators Sam Sattin and Chris Koehler
46. Book Pairings: Who Fears Death & Jeweled Fire
47. Five Things That Happen When You Hand In Your Manuscript
48. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Multiple Personalities of Omniscient 3rd Person: Spotlight on “Reporter”
49. Small-Scale Epic Childhood: Memories of Playing at the Cabin on the Mogollon Rim
50. Cuenca: A Clifftop Medieval Town in Spain

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

1. Nazi Film Review: Hitlerjunge Quex
2. Heroic Fantasy with the Sharp Edge of Reality: A Review of The Sacred Band by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
3. New Treasures: The Library of America Publishes Elmore Leonard
4. The Great Savage Sword Re-Read: Vol. 2
5. Things Your Writing Teacher Never Told You: The Skeleton Matters (Or, Why It’s Not OK to Skip Scenes in Your Third Act)
6. A Review of Warriors, edited by George R.R. Martin & Gardner Dozois
7. The IX by Andrew P. Weston
8. Art of the Genre: Top 10 Fantasy Artists of the Past 100 Years
9. Vintage Treasures: The Silistra Quartet by Janet Morris
10. Return to Thieves World in Beyond Sanctuary: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris
11. Tribulations Herculean and Tragic: Beyond Wizardwall by Janet Morris
12. Caught Between Rebels and the Empire’s Blackest Magic: Beyond the Veil: The Revised and Expanded Author’s Cut by Janet Morris
13. Part Gothic, Part Sword and Sorcery, and Part Horror: Andrew P. Weston’s Hell Bound
14. R.A. Lafferty Literary Estate For Sale
15. Love in War and Realms Beyond Imagining: A Review of The Fish, the Fighters and the Song Girl by Janet Morris and Chris Morris
16. Art of the Genre: Art of Dungeon Maps
17. Register Your Interest, Copyright for Paper and E-Books
18. My Inspiration: Black Canaan
19. A Detailed Explanation
20. Fantasia Diary 2015, Day 5: Teana: 10000 Years Later, Crimson Whale, and The Shamer’s Daughter
21. AD&D Figurines: Youth In a Box?
22. Challenging the Classics: Questioning the Arbitrary Browsing Mechanism
23. The Return of the King (1980)
24. A Proposal: An Award for SF Storytelling
25. Snake Extermination Tips for the Unsuccessful Barbarian Warrior

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. “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” by Joe Bonadonna
4. “The Pit Slave” by Vaughn Heppner
5. “The Weird of Ironspell” by John R. Fultz
6. “Awakening” by Judith Berman
7. “Assault and Battery” by Jason E. Thummel
8. “The Trade,” Part One of The Tales of Gemen, by Mark Rigney
9. “A Phoenix in Darkness” by Donald S. Crankshaw
10. “The Quintessence of Absence” by Sean McLachlan

The top categories last month were:

1. Vintage Treasures
2. Magazines
3. Blog Entry
4. Books
5. New Treasures
6. Art of the Genre
7. Art
8. Reviews
9. Conan
10. Game Reviews
11. News
12. Contest
13. Fiction
14. Future Treasures
15. Goth Chick
16. Discovering Robert E. Howard
17. Editor’s Blog
18. Essays
19. Comics
20. Teaching and Fantasy Literature

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in March are here, and you can see all 106 posts we made in the month of April here.