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Author: John ONeill

Howard Andrew Jones, July 19, 1968 – January 16, 2025

Howard Andrew Jones, July 19, 1968 – January 16, 2025

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John O’Neill and Howard Andrew Jones at the World Science Fiction Convention, Washington DC, December 19, 2021

Howard Andrew Jones is dead.

It’s hard to write those words. Howard has been a huge part of my personal and professional life since 2002, when I opened a submission to Black Gate magazine and found a long, rambling, and extremely enthusiastic cover letter from him, expressing his delight at finding a quality magazine devoted to heroic fantasy. The letter ended with “I want in, bad,” and was attached to a terrific tale featuring two adventurers named Dabir and Asim.

We eventually published three Dabir and Asim tales in Black Gate, and within a few years Howard’s editorial contributions had become so essential to the magazine that we named him our first Managing Editor. He ran our non-fiction department, single-handedly recruiting and managing over a dozen contributors to fill some 80 pages every issue with thoughtful essays, book reviews, gaming coverage, and much more.

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The Failed Giant: Five Tributes to Barry N. Malzberg

The Failed Giant: Five Tributes to Barry N. Malzberg

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Barry N. Malzberg

Barry N. Malzberg died on December 19. In his Black Gate obituary, Rich Horton wrote:

Malzberg was in his unique way a true giant in our field. Barry himself, in his later years, seemed to regard his career as a failure, but it was no such thing. He may have stopped publishing novels out of a feeling the publishing world wasn’t receptive to his work, but the best of what he did publish is outstanding, and thoroughly representative of his own vision.

Tributes and reminiscences have poured in over the last week, and many amplify Rich’s comments, especially in regard to both the importance of Malzberg’s work, and his embittered attitude towards the field near the end of his career. Several writers, including Adam-Troy Castro and Gregory Feeley, have generously granted permission for me to reprint their lengthy comments here, including several fascinating anecdotes.

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Merry Christmas from Black Gate

Merry Christmas from Black Gate

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This has been a milestone year for our little website. In 1999 my friend Wayne MacLaurin helped me register the blackgate.com domain, and we launched the site to support our ambitious fantasy magazine. This year we quietly celebrated a quarter-century of continuous operation and quality fantasy coverage, and in the process added several talented newcomers to our small staff of regular bloggers, including Neil Baker, Jeffrey Talanian, Charles Gramlich, William H. Stoddard, and Ian McDowell. We also welcomed back David Soyka, one of our founding bloggers, after a long sabbatical.

Over the past 25 years the site has evolved significantly, and when the print magazine died in 2011 it became our sole focus. Five years later George R.R. Martin presented us with an Alfie Award, and that same year we won a World Fantasy Award, a pair of singular honors I still find a little hard to believe.

Over the long years our focus has changed dramatically. In the early years it was all about growing the site and increasing traffic, and we achieved success I never dreamed of, peaking at over 2 million page views/month. But in the last fifteen years I’ve come to understand that the true rewards of a site like this aren’t in ever-increasing site metrics. They’re in the people I’ve met along the way, and the countless way my own love of the genre has deepened and expanded.

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Alien Cults, Interstellar Wars, and a Starship Murder Mystery: November-December Print Magazines

Alien Cults, Interstellar Wars, and a Starship Murder Mystery: November-December Print Magazines

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November-December 2024 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog
Science Fiction & Fact. Cover art by Shutterstock and John Sumrow

We’ve got issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction & Fact to see us through the dark months of winter, and they’re even more star-studded than usual, with contributions from Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Mary Robinette Kowal, Sean Monaghan, Dominica Phetteplace, Molly Gloss, Jack Skillingstead, Shane Tourtellotte, Sean McMullen, Alexander Jablokov, Jerry Oltion, Mary Soon Lee, and lots more.

The issues contain Rusch’s new novella “Death Benefits,” which Sam Tomaino calls “magnificent… [Rusch] at the height of her powers. It will be on my shortlist for Best Novella Hugo next year;” Peter Wood’s starship murder mystery “Murder on the Orion Express” (“ingenious… a great story”); Jack Skillingstead’s tale of a civil servant in a city beset by war tasked with recording the dead, “The Ledgers” (“Grim”); and David Cleden’s “The Touchstone of Ouroboros,” in which priests of a cult that worships an ancient alien object come face to face with the consequences of their faith, which Victoria Silverwolf praises with “Although some of the mysteries surrounding the object are explained by the end, it remains an enigma. In a sense, it is also a character, albeit one that is impossible to comprehend.”

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G.W. Thomas on Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers

G.W. Thomas on Fred Saberhagen’s Berserkers

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Three collections in Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker Saga: Berserker, Brother Assassin, and The Ultimate Enemy
(Ace Books, September 1978, December 1978, and September 1979). Covers: Boris Vallejo and Michael Whelan

Ace SF blogger G.W. Thomas, working atop a demon-haunted tower in Alberta, has been digging deep into a lot of my favorite old SF paperbacks, including C. L. Moore & Henry Kuttner’s Earth’s Last Citadel, Murray Leinster’s Get Off My World!, and Space Operas You May Have Missed.

But I think my favorite recent piece was his two-part series on a writer who’s largely forgotten today: Fred Saberhagen, author of The Book of Swords, Empire of the East, and The Dracula Tape, and his most enduring creation: the galaxy-roving Berserkers. which appeared in some seventeen volumes.

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G.W. Thomas on Science Fiction of the 30s by Damon Knight

G.W. Thomas on Science Fiction of the 30s by Damon Knight

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Conan the Barbarian: Archie Style! From Everything Archie
#111 (May 1984). Art by Stan Goldberg and Larry Lapick.

G.W. Thomas has gradually become my favorite genre blogger. Not just because of his constant stream of content — he posts every two days at Dark Worlds Quarterly, and has been doing so for nearly a decade — but because of his endlessly zany topics. In the past few months he’s covered Haunted Houses in 50s comics, the Top Ten Ghostbreakers from Weird Tales, Werewolves of EC Comics, Space Heroes of the Golden Age, Fearless Vampire Killers of the pulps, Top Ten Fantasy Fight Scenes from 1980-1985 sword & sorcery flicks, Plant Monsters, Conan in Archie Comics, and so, so much more. For pulp and comic enthusiasts of a Certain Age, G.W. has tapped a nostalgic mother lode.

He also delves pretty deep into more serious topics of real interest, like that time he wrote a one-sentence review of every story in Damon Knight’s classic anthology Science Fiction of the 30s, complete with the original pulp illustrations.

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Galactic War, Haunted Farmhouses, and an Occupied Earth: September-October Print Magazines

Galactic War, Haunted Farmhouses, and an Occupied Earth: September-October Print Magazines

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September-October 2024 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog
Science Fiction & Fact, and the Summer issue of The Magazine of Fantasy
& Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, NASA, and Mondolithic Studios

The big news this month is the arrival of the new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, after a nearly 8-month hiatus. In the pages of the new issue, publisher Gordon van Gelder reports that “Ongoing production problems have led us to skip the Spring issue and to switch to a quarterly schedule.” The new issue is cover-dated Summer 2024.

It’s a huge relief to have F&SF back on schedule — and the new issue looks terrific, with new fiction from Albert Chu, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Esther Friesner, Deborah L. Davitt, Phoenix Alexander, and lots more. The September-October issues of Asimov’s SF and Analog don’t disappoint either, with new stories from Naomi Kritzer, James Patrick Kelley, Robert Reed, Alice Towey, Stephanie Feldman, Anita Vijayakumar, Robert R. Chase, Susan Shwartz, Ray Nayler, Adam-Troy Castro, Wil McCarthy, Mar Vincent, Kedrick Brown, Tony Ballantyne, James Van Pelt, Mark W. Teidemann, and lots more.

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New Treasures: Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

New Treasures: Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

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Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea (Bramble, May 7, 2024). Cover by Irene Huang

I had a few bucks in my pocket during my last trip to Barnes & Noble last week, and came home with some magazines and two books: a handsome reprint of The Black Prism by Brent Weeks, and the breakout cozy fantasy by Rebecca Thorne, Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea.

I’d love to be able to tell you what I thought of Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea. Unfortunately, I can’t. My son stole it. He stayed up reading all night last Saturday. He hasn’t done that since he was eleven.

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Robot Avatars, Criminal Combines, and a Sisterhood of Space Pilots: July-August 2024 Print SF Magazines

Robot Avatars, Criminal Combines, and a Sisterhood of Space Pilots: July-August 2024 Print SF Magazines

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July-August 2024 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction & Fact.
Cover art by John Sumrow (for “Sisters of the Flare”) and Shutterstock

Might as well get the bad news out of the way up front. There’s still no new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but we hope for better news next month.

Unfortunately, that’s the same thing we said two months ago, and two months before that. We’re now 2/3rds of the way through 2024, and F&SF has published only a single issue. Magazine publishing is hard, especially these days, so if they can get back on track by the end of the year, all will certainly be forgiven. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of great fiction in the print magazines we do have in hand, the July-August issues of Asimov’s SF and Analog, including new stories from Greg Egan, James Van Pelt, Susan Palwick, R. Garcia y Robertson, Leah Cypess, Genevieve Valentine, Stephen Case, Alex Irvine, Michael F. Flynn, Alice Towey, Thoraiya Dyer, and lots more.

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Vintage Treasures: The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H.P. Lovecraft

Vintage Treasures: The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H.P. Lovecraft

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The Doom That Came to Sarnath (Ballantine Books, November 1976). Cover by Murray Tinkelman

H.P. Lovecraft, creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, was one of the greatest horror writers of the 20th Century. But horror wasn’t all he produced, as editor Lin Carter adroitly pointed out in the introduction to The Doom That Came to Sarnath.

Those readers who know only the Cthulhu Mythos stories, know only a single side of Lovecraft… the Cthulhu Mythos, while completely his own invention, was constructed along the guidelines established by earlier writers whom he greatly admired… But far beyond his borrowing of basic techniques from Machen and Chambers, Lovecraft is more deeply indebted to the great Anglo-Irish fantasist, Lord Dunsany… not content to make up his own geography, Dunsany invented the religion to which his imaginary worlds paid worship. An extremely clever, even brilliant, idea, and one which has been used by many writers after him. Lovecraft used this theme as the basis for his own Cthulhu Mythos.

As a young reader, Lovecraft was enthralled by Dunsany’s superb fiction. Many of his earliest tales… are Dunsanian in texture and color… Last year I edited a volume of the most Dunsanian of these tales, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath… I would have liked to have included all the fiction from Lovecraft’s “Dunsanian period” in that single book, but the size of the volume would have been impractical. Hence, this second collection.

The Doom That Came to Sarnath contains 14 stories and poems from early in Lovecraft’s career (1919-1925), plus half a dozen later tales, including his famous collaboration with Harry Houdini, “Imprisoned With the Pharaohs.” Although many of the tales — including the title story — are deliciously macabre, there’s very little horror here. It is, as Lin Carter promised, a surprise and delight for those who know Lovecraft only as a horror writer.
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