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Author: John ONeill

New Treasures: The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan

New Treasures: The Justice of Kings by Richard Swan

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The Justice of Kings (Orbit, August 23, 2022). Cover by Martina Fackova

These days it’s all about blending genres. Dark fantasy police procedurals (Dan Stout’s The Carter Archives). High fantasy romance (Foz Meadow’s A Strange and Stubborn Endurance). Cthulhu mythos and epic fantasy (Jonathan Mayberry’s Kagen the Damned). If you can imagine it, then trust me, it’s out there.

Some genres go together better than others, though. For my money, the ideal pairing is the tightly plotted murder mystery, blended with the sprawling cast of an ambitious political fantasy. Turns out that perfectly describes Richard Swan’s brand new novel The Justice of Kings, released at the end of August by Orbit. Booklist labels it “Rich and interesting,” and Grimdark Magazine flat out calls it “Brilliant.” Here’s an excerpt from the enthusiastic starred review at Kirkus.

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Vintage Treasures: The Lord Darcy Adventures by Randall Garrett

Vintage Treasures: The Lord Darcy Adventures by Randall Garrett

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Too Many Magicians, Murder and Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates
(Ace, 1979 – 1981). Cover art by Robert Adragna

In 1977 Jim Baen accepted an offer from publisher Tom Doherty to return to Ace Books to head their science fiction line. Doherty left Ace to found Tor Books in 1980 and Baen soon followed him, but his years at Ace were extraordinarily productive. He resurrected an enormous amount of classic SF and fantasy from the magazines and brought it to a brand new audience, including Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Poul Anderson’s Flandry, Keith Laumer’s Retief, Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker, H. Beam Piper’s Fuzzy novels, and collections by Robert Sheckley, James Tiptree, Jr, Robert E. Howard, James H. Schmitz, Barry N. Malzberg, and countless others.

One of the most distinctive works Baen championed was Randall Garrett’s tales of occult detective Lord Darcy, set in an alternate England in which the laws of Magic are rigorously codified, but the laws of physics remain unknown. He gathered them into three volumes: the novel Too Many Magicians and the collections Murder and Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates. They captured a brand new readership, and the books have been reprinted half a dozen times in subsequent decades.

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The Most Ambitious SF Novel of 2021: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

The Most Ambitious SF Novel of 2021: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

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The Actual Star (Harper Voyager reprint edition, August 16, 2022). Cover art by Monica Byrne

The trick to really staying on top of the best SF and fantasy, I’ve found, is to take the time to find a handful of excellent reviewers, and trust what they tell you. I’ve discovered over long years that Rich Horton is one of the most reliable and discerning readers out there, and this is what he posted on Facebook three days ago.

I just finished reading (via listening to) The Actual Star, by Monica Byrne. I don’t think it’s perfect, but I will say it is way more ambitious than any other 2021 SF novel I’ve read, and I strongly think it deserved a Hugo nomination.

By strange coincidence, I’d just picked up a copy of the Harper Voyager paperback reprint of The Actual Star, and had a copy to hand. See how fate works for you when you let it?

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of British SF 1 and 2 edited by Mike Ashley

Vintage Treasures: The Best of British SF 1 and 2 edited by Mike Ashley

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The Best of British SF 1 and 2 (Orbit, 1977). Covers by Bob Layzell

Every once in a while I sit back, take stock of our accomplishments, and think, “Man. We’ve showcased countless forgotten writers here at Black Gate, discussed tens of thousands of neglected books, writing late into the night on tight deadlines, and nobody has spell checked anything.”

Still, I’m justifiably proud of what we’ve accomplished in the 23 years this website has been live. Though I do have to admit that we have been, like the market at large, over-focused on American publishing. So I was delighted to find the massive two-volume anthology The Best of British SF 1 and 2, published as paperback originals by Orbit in 1977.

Containing nearly 800 pages of short fiction from Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, John Wyndham, John Russell Fearn, Eric Frank Russell, Arthur C. Clarke, John Christopher, John Brunner, E. C. Tubb, Brian W. Aldiss, James White, Bob Shaw, Philip E. High, Colin Kapp, Kingsley Amis, J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Keith Roberts, and many others — all interspersed with insightful genre history and commentary from editor Mike Ashley — these books are a wonderful retrospective of the finest science fiction from across the pond.

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A Masterclass in Grand-Scale Storytelling: The Legacy of the Mercenary King by Nick Martell

A Masterclass in Grand-Scale Storytelling: The Legacy of the Mercenary King by Nick Martell

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The Legacy of the Mercenary King trilogy: The Kingdom of Liars, The Two-Faced Queen and The Voyage
of the Forgotten (Saga Press, February 8, 2022). Covers by Bastien Lecouffe Deharme and Benjamin Carré

I love it when a fantasy trilogy sneaks up on me.

It seemed like just yesterday we were reporting on the imminent release of The Kingdom of Liars, the debut fantasy from 23-year old wunderkind Nick Martell, getting rave reviews from all quarters. Now I find the third volume in the trilogy will be released in a matter of weeks…. how did that happen?

The acclaim for this series has only grown with each volume. At Tor.com, Paul Weimer described it as “Something like PKD and [Gene] Wolfe teaming up to write City State Fantasy.” Kirkus called the first one “An impressive fantasy debut,” but pulled out all the stops for The Two-Faced Queen, saying “Simply put, this series is a masterclass in grand-scale storytelling. The future of epic fantasy is here — and this saga is it.”

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New Treasures: 36 Streets by T.R. Napper

New Treasures: 36 Streets by T.R. Napper

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36 Streets (Titan Books, February 8, 2022). Cover by Shutterstock

Here’s one that came out a while ago, but I just caught up with recently: 36 Streets, the debut novel by Australian T.R. Napper.

It’s got a Blade Runner/Cyberpunk vibe, and an armload of great notices: Grimdark Magazine calls it “brilliantly realized SF noir,” Publishers Weekly proclaims it “A gripping near-future cyberthriller with plenty of action and intrigue,” and SciNow sums it up as “a deeply textured vision of the future brimming with new and inventive ideas… a gripping sci-fi thriller.”

Sounds like my kind of debut. I snapped up a copy on my last trip to Barnes & Noble. Here’s a snippet from that Grimdark review by Adrian Collins.

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Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy edited by Lin Carter

Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy edited by Lin Carter

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Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy, Volume 1 (Ballantine Books, 1972). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo

Over the decades we’ve spent a lot of pixels at Black Gate talking about Lin Carter’s groundbreaking Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. He was under contract to produce a book a month for editors Ian and Betty Ballantine, and that’s exactly what he did for five years and 65 titles, almost all reprints of out-of-print fantasy novels and original anthologies. For the most part my favorites are those marvelous anthologies, including The Young Magicians, Golden Cities, Far, Discoveries in Fantasy, and others.

In 1972 and 1973 Carter produced the first two volumes in what he’d hoped would be an ongoing series, Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy. They each included four novellas, accompanied by his usual fine introductions, and it’s a tragedy he was unable to produce any more before the Adult Fantasy series was discontinued when Random House bought Ballantine. In his opening essay, Four Worlds of Wonder, Carter explains his focus on longer fantasy.

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Strange Diseases, Vengeful Ghosts, and Lovecraftian Horror: September/October 2022 Print SF Magazines

Strange Diseases, Vengeful Ghosts, and Lovecraftian Horror: September/October 2022 Print SF Magazines

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September/October 2022 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by 123RF, 123RF, and Bob Eggleton

I was at the launch party for Randee Dawn’s debut novel Tune in Tomorrow at Worldcon this month (with the most amazing TV-shaped cake — seriously, check it out), when I spotted the also-amazing Sheila Williams, editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. I was hoping for the chance to catch up, but long before that happy event the party became so crowded that Jacob Weisman and I, who’ve both managed to dodge COVID for the past two years, nervously ducked out and ended up talking in relative quiet on the Hyatt skyway.

Some time before midnight Sheila found us as she made her weary way to her hotel room. We pulled over some chairs, and soon there was a small crowd of us gossiping about short fiction on the skyway over North Stetson Avenue (ironically enough, overlooking the exact location of the opening scene of my novel The Robots of Gotham).

One of the things Sheila shared was that, despite all my expectations to the contrary, the print SF magazines — including Asimov’s and Analog — are doing very well, thank you. The pandemic played havoc with distribution, and for the last few years all the attention (and award nominations) has gone to online magazines like Uncanny and Clarkesworld, but Asimov’s subscriber base has proven remarkably steadfast, and is even growing. I’ve been used to a steady stream of bad news, and general gloom and doom around the print mags for years, and it was wonderful to hear they have plenty of life in them yet.

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Vintage Treasures: The Starhammer/Vang Trilogy by Christopher Rowley

Vintage Treasures: The Starhammer/Vang Trilogy by Christopher Rowley

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Starhammer, The Vang: The Military Form and The Vang: The Battlemaster
(Del Rey, 1986 – 1990). Covers by David Schleinkofer and Stephen Hickman

I’m a huge fan of modern science fiction, and I find no shortage of new novels and and series to coo over here. But there are times when I miss the old-school SF of last century, rooted in the Cold War paranoia of the 50s and 60s. The Golden Age of invaders from space, all-consuming blobs, and gooey alien parasites that have their sights set on your lower G.I. tract.

In the late 80s Christopher Rowley, author of the popular Battle Dragons series from Roc, had a hit with his Vang novels, a space opera/alien parasite hybrid. Clearly inspired by the author’s love of Alien and pulp-era SF by A.E. Van Vogt, Jack Vance, Eric Frank Russell, and others, the trilogy — Starhammer, The Vang: The Military Form and The Vang: The Battlemaster — had the sweep of epic space opera crossed with the gritty realism of James Cameron’s Colonial Marines.

The story of The Vang begins when the asteroid miner Seed of Hope, illegally prospecting in a Forbidden Sector of the Saskatch system, finds a billion year-old vessel containing an alien horror, the last vestige of a race nearly annihilated in an ancient conflict that convulsed the galaxy. It’s an encounter that will plunge humanity into a desperate war of survival.

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High-spirited Mayhem: The Founders Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett

High-spirited Mayhem: The Founders Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett

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Foundryside-small Shorefall-small


Foundryside, Shorefall, and Locklands (Crown and Del Rey, 2018 – 2022). Cover designs by Will Staehle

Robert Jackson Bennett is the author of the Divine Cities trilogy (City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles), as well as the BFA and Shirley Jackson Award winner Mr. Shivers. Locklands, the closing novel in his Founders series, was released at the end of June and, in keeping with tradition, we baked a cake here at our rooftop headquarters to celebrate the successful wrap of another quality fantasy trilogy. (Apropos of nothing, we badly need a gym in the rooftop headquarters…)

Former Black Gate blogger Amal El-Mohtar called Foundryside, the first volume in the trilogy:

Absolutely riveting… A magnificent, mind-blowing start to a series… I felt fully, utterly engaged by the ideas, actually in love with the core characters… and in awe of Bennett’s craft.

It came in fourth in the annual Locus poll for Best Fantasy Novel, and was selected as one of the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2018 by The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog. Here’s how they described it at the time.

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