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Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

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Black Gate correspondent David Soyka continues his search for the best in new fantasy — and has some real success in the pages of the impressive new Fantasy Magazine:

The issues I’ve seen feature wistful-looking young women gazing at something presumably magical, leading you to think the contents concern themselves with faery land kind of stuff. Not quite. . . [Some of these stories] could just as easily have appeared in a literary magazine, as Toni Morrison-styled magic realism. None strike me as mere “escapism.”

Join David as he looks at new work from Theodora Goss, Stewart O’Nan, Darrell Schweitzer, Midori Snyder, K. D. Wentworth and many others, in recent issues of Fantasy Magazine, Realms of Fantasy, and Heliotrope.

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Conan: Songs of the Dead

Conan: Songs of the Dead

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Joe Lansdale, auhor of the Hap Collins novels, brings his unique brand of mojo storytelling to Dark Horse Comics to tell a brand new tale of Conan the Cimmerian in a five-issue limited series illustrated by the brilliant Timothy Truman.

“Lansdale’s Conan is rough-hewn, with an earthy sense of humor that may surprise longtime fans… There’s enough action in the first two issues to warm the heart of any sword & sorcery fan.”

Join Charles Rutledge as he talks with Lansdale about this exciting new series, which follows Conan and his old comrade Alvazar into the Stygian desert in a rolicking adventure that begins with the theft of a holy artifact, and soon involves priests of the snake god Set, a quest to a strange temple, a seductive female ghost, and a horde of flesh-hungry zombies!

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Horrorscope Review: Black Gate 9

Horrorscope Review: Black Gate 9

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Captivating… sophisticated… This is complex, emotional fantasy at its finest.

Horrorscope, the Australian webzine of Dark Fiction, has posted a feature review of Black Gate 9 by Shane Jiraiya Cummings.

I was immediately struck by the excellent embellishments and illustrations… Editor John O’Neill has lavishly added side-features like extended author bios with book covers. Black Gate also has a healthy complement of non-fiction including book and role-playing game reviews and an exhaustive feature on the awarding of retro-Hugo awards.

Read the complete review to see why Black Gate continues to gather acclaim as one of the best fantasy magazines on the market!

The Fantasy Cycles of Clark Ashton Smith Part III: Tales of Zothique

The Fantasy Cycles of Clark Ashton Smith Part III: Tales of Zothique

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Clark Ashton Smith was one of the most influential authors in modern American fantasy. Along with H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, his early contributions to Weird Tales virtually created Sword-and-Sorcery, and his tales are still considered among the very best the genre has to offer.

In 1932 Smith found the ideal setting for his poetic and dark imagination: the last continent of dying Zothique. The sixteen stories, a poem, and one-act play that constitute the Zothique cycle contain some of the most superb examples of Smith’s fiction. The far future continent, which Smith imagined “will arise millions of years hence and will witness the intrusions of things from galaxies not yet visible,” is the final stage of life on Earth.

In his third article on Smith’s fiction, Ryan Harvey examines the Zothique cycle in detail. Join him in a tour of the last human civilization, a land where “New stars without number had declared themselves in the heavens, and the shadows of the infinite had drawn closer. And out of the shadows, the older gods had returned to man. . . And the elder demons had also returned, battering on the fumes of evil sacrifices, and fostering again the primordial sorceries.”

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Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

Black Gate Short Fiction Reviews

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What? You’ve finished reading all of Black Gate‘s back issues, and you’re still hungry for good short fiction?

Don’t despair. Last month we dispatched seasoned Black Gate fiction correspondent David Soyka to the outer reaches of the strange and mysterious magazine marketplace (a dimly-lit Barnes and Noble in Charlottesville, VA) and, just when we thought we were going to have to send Don Bassingthwaite on a rescue mission, he returned — with fresh scars, and tales of wondrous things.

Join David as he reports on the exciting sightings on the frontiers of genre fiction, including Interzone, H. P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror, and the strange and mythical thing (once thought extinct) known as Sword-and-Sorcery, found thriving in the pages of Howard Andrew Jones’ Flashing Swords.

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Twilight Tales Interview with John O’Neill

Twilight Tales Interview with John O’Neill

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Twilight Tales is a Chicago institution. For over a decade it’s brought hundreds of authors from around the world to perform their stories live at Chicago’s Red Lion Pub as part of its weekly fiction reading series.

Over the years Black Gate editor and publisher John O’Neill has participated in Twilight Tales editors’ panels, and been a judge for its “Authors in the Hot Seat” critique shows.

Now David Munger interviews John as part of the Twilight Tales Interview series, covering such topics as the magazine’s beginnings, his editorial vision, the future of short fiction, and the three novels every Black Gate reader — and aspiring fantasy writer — should read.

The Sorcery of Storytelling: The Imaginary Worlds of Darrell Schweitzer

The Sorcery of Storytelling: The Imaginary Worlds of Darrell Schweitzer

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Darrell Schweitzer is one of fantasy’s true renaissance men. As co-editor of Weird Tales he’s kept alive the field’s most venerated and historic magazine, while simultaneously helping guide and shape the next generation of fantasy authors. As a literary critic he’s illuminated the careers of many modern masters with his Discovering Modern Horror Fiction series, The Thomas Ligotti Reader, the upcoming Neil Gaiman Reader, and many other fine works.

But it’s with his fiction that he’s made his most important contributions. The author of over three hundred published short stories and three novels, including Mask of the Sorcerer and The White Isle, Darrell Schweitzer has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award three times.

Black Gate author John R. Fultz examines the career of this celebrated author with a look at his most influential novels and collections, and a lengthy interview with the man the critic Mike Ashley labels “today’s supreme stylist.”

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The Demarcation of Sword and Sorcery

The Demarcation of Sword and Sorcery

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Sword-and-Sorcery is enjoying something of a twenty-first century renaissance (though don’t start looking for a S&S section at Barnes & Noble just yet). While there are several talented modern practitioners, its roots remain firmly in the past, in authors such as Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and L. Sprague de Camp.

But if you’re a new fan of the genre, it’s not always easy to find. In fact, the demarcation between Sword-and-Sorcery and other forms of heroic fantasy isn’t always clear, and many modern critics don’t even bother. Is it Lord of the Rings? Conan the Barbarian? What is Swords-and-Sorcery, exactly?

Join Black Gate author Joseph A. McCullough V as he explores this question, with special regard for the two authors regarded as “truly representative of heroic fantasy,” and a look back at some of the genre’s most influential and important works.

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Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year: 2005

Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year: 2005

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For years Rich Horton, Contributing Editor to Locus and Black Gate and one of the most accomplished reviewers in the genre, has been preparing exhaustive summaries of the Year in Short Fiction, complete with his choices for the Best of the Year in a wide variety of categories.

This year Black Gate is pleased to present Rich Horton’s Virtual Best of the Year: 2005, a retrospective of the very best the field had to offer in the last twelve months. From a reading list of over 100 different sources and 1750 stories — the collected output of the finest print and online magazines, collections and anthologies, from Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine to Electric Velocipede to The New Yorker — Rich selects the fiction that really matters.

Join us for a fond look back at 2005 from one of the genre’s most respected critics.

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Black Gate 9

Black Gate 9

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Morlock the Maker — last seen in “Turn Up This Crooked Way” in Black Gate 8 — is lured into an ingenious trap by a master of golems. . . a peerless samurai encounters the greatest test of his life when he allows an old man to taunt him into battle. . . a young girl searches for a pet in a neighborhood haunted by deathwalkers and Avatar monsters. . . a bard strives to rally a tribe of Danes as they’re struck down one-by-one by an unseen monster. . . and a young scientist desperately races against time to rescue two inter-dimensional travelers trapped in a world of horrors.

This issue includes fiction from William John Watkins, James Enge, Murray Leinster, Michael Canfield, and many others. Rich Horton continues his popular series of genre retrospectives with a look at Retro-Hugos That Will Never Be, plus there are columns and reviews from Don Bassingthwaite, Steven Silver, and Todd McAulty.

All this and much more. Subscribe Now to make sure you don’t miss out, and we’ll include a copy of the acclaimed Lords of Swords for only $4.95, while quantities last!

Don’t miss it!