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Author: John ONeill

Hard SF and Cosmic Lovecraftian Horror: The Fallen, Book 2 of The Outside by Ada Hoffman

Hard SF and Cosmic Lovecraftian Horror: The Fallen, Book 2 of The Outside by Ada Hoffman

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The Outside and The Fallen (Angry Robot, June 2019 and July 2021). Covers by Lee Gibbons.

Ada Hoffman’s The Outside (Angry Robot) hit the sweet of my favorite genres. The B&N SciFi & Fantasy Blog called it “starkly original, and tinged with hints of horror fantasy – truly operatic stuff,” and Kate Sherrod at The Skiffy and Fanty podcast labeled it

A boffo combination of hard science fiction, cosmic Lovecraftian horror, both cyber-and-god-punk, some ridiculously charismatic aliens, and a fascinating female protagonist somewhere on the autism spectrum… Ada Hoffmann’s The Outside feels like it was made to order for us.

OK, maybe my favorite genres are a little eclectic, but you gotta admit that sounds good. And you can understand my immediate interest in the sequel, The Fallen, which arrived this summer. Here’s all the details.

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New Treasures: Among Thieves by MJ Kuhn

New Treasures: Among Thieves by MJ Kuhn

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Among Thieves by M.J. Kuhn (Saga Press, September 2021)

It’s been a long week, and it’s time to relax with a good fantasy novel. Lucky for me, Saga Press has just released M.J. Kuhn’s debut, the tale of a high-stakes heist in a world of magic and malice. It sounds like just what I’m looking for. Here’s the enthusiastic review from Publisher’s Weekly.

Kuhn debuts with an electrifying fantasy that takes readers into the seamy heart of Dresdell, one of the five kingdoms of Thamorr, where rival crime syndicates vie for jobs. When Toliver Shadowwood, the King of Edale, arranges a meeting with the Kestrel Crowns, Ryia Cautella, an infamous member of the Saints of the Wharf, snoops on their rendezvous. She discovers that Shadowwood is after an ancient, magical quill belonging to the Guildmaster of Thamorr, the most powerful person in all the five kingdoms. It’s this quill that gives the Guildmaster his uncanny powers, so when the Crowns reject the offer, Ryia seizes the opportunity to poach the job… Kuhn successfully builds a fast-paced mystery around both the quill’s powers and Ryia’s troubled past. Fantasy fans won’t want to miss this.

Among Thieves was published by Saga Press on September 7, 2021. It is 343 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover, $12.99 in digital and $19 in audio formats. The cover is by Chris McGrath. See all our recent New Treasures here.

New Treasures: We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen

New Treasures: We Have Always Been Here by Lena Nguyen

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We Have Always Been Here (DAW, July 2021). Cover by Yurly Muzur

We’re back! Well, we never left, but a corrupted database table made it…. challenging to publish new articles. That happens when your site is 20 years old and has half a million subscribers. So they tell me.

I’m sick of looking at database tables, let me tell you. What do I want to look at? Books! Come on, that was an easy one.

So tonight I settle down with a new science fiction debut, a creepy novel of deep space exploration by Lena Nguyen. Kirkus Reviews calls it “claustrophobic and dark, full of twisting ship corridors and unreliable characters…. A promising, atmospheric debut,” and The Chicago Review of Books praises it as a “multi-layered ghost story in space… [set in] an increasingly horrific labyrinth.” Here’s the publisher’s description for We Have Always Been Here.

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Interzone 290-291 Now on Sale

Interzone 290-291 Now on Sale

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Interzone 290-291. Wraparound cover by Vincent Sammy

There was some uncertainty about the fate of British SF magazine Interzone at the beginning of the year. Well, I was uncertain, anyway. Long-time publisher and editor Andy Cox announced the magazine was being sold, then quietly announced it wasn’t. The January-February 2021 issue never appeared. But then, out of the blue, this beautiful and massive double issue appeared in June to lay all doubts to rest. Here’s the description from the website.

192 gorgeous full color pages packed full of modern science fiction and fantasy: New long and short stories by Alexander Glass, Tim Major, Lyle Hopwood, Daniel Bennett, Cécile Cristofari, Matt Thompson, John Possidente, Lavie Tidhar, and Shauna O’Meara; Climbing Stories by Aliya Whiteley (x2); Ansible Link by David Langford; lots of book reviews; six and a half thousand words of Nick Lowe’s Mutant Popcorn; wraparound cover art by Vincent Sammy and story illustrations by Jim Burns, Vince Haig, Richard Wagner, Dave Senecal, Ev Shipard and others.

Interzone is one of the most beautiful SF magazines on the market. Here’s a sample of some of the gorgeous interior art.

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New Treasures: The Lights of Prague by Nicole Jarvis

New Treasures: The Lights of Prague by Nicole Jarvis

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The Lights of Prague (Titan, May 2021). Cover design by Julia Lloyd

I found Nicole Jarvis’s The Lights of Prague while wandering through Barnes & Noble this summer. It’s a debut in every sense of the word — Jarvis hasn’t published any previous short fiction, and I can’t even find a web page for her. But the book sounds extremely relevant to my interests. Have a look at this snippet from Mya Alexice’s BookPage review.

Nicole Jarvis’ debut fantasy, The Lights of Prague, welcomes readers into an arresting and vivid historical fantasy world… In her version of the culturally rich European city, creatures from Czech folklore haunt its streets and endanger its citizens. Pijavice — vampiric monsters consumed by bloodlust — are particularly terrifying to those who walk alone at night. The Lights of Prague follows Domek Myska, an earnest member of the lamplighters, who in this world are also a monster-hunting secret society that keeps these creatures at bay, and Lady Ora Fischerová, a charming widow with her own ties to Prague’s supernatural underground…

The Lights of Prague is an impressive and mature feat from a debut novelist.

The Lights of Prague was published by Titan Books on May 25, 2021. It is 413 pages, priced at $15.95 in paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. The cover was deigned by Julia Lloyd. See all our recent New Treasures here.

Future Treasures: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

Future Treasures: The Actual Star by Monica Byrne

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The Actual Star (Harper Voyager, September 14, 2021)

Tomorrow I’m playing hooky from work and spending the day at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show in Lombard, Illinois. It’s my favorite annual convention, and the first I’ve attended in the pandemic era. It will be great to meet up with Black Gate contributors Rich Horton, Doug Ellis, William Patrick Maynard — and Greg Mele, whom I’ve never met in person before.

Even though I’m going to be spending the three days immersed in the great SF and fantasy of the past, I’m still here for you when it comes to SF and fantasy of the future. So before I jump in my trusty pulpmobile and head out for the weekend, I want to take a minute to tell you about Monica Byrne’s second novel, The Actual Star, arriving in hardcover next week. Her first novel The Girl in the Road (2014) was nominated for the Locus award and won the 2015 James Tiptree, Jr. Award. And this one has garnered a lot of advance praise — Booklist calls it “Complex and captivating,” and Tor.com says it’s “Reminiscent of Octavia E. Butler… Byrne creates cultures and characters that embody depth, sensitivity, and a riveting story line.” Here’s a snippet from the feature review by Michael Marshall at New Scientist, who labels it “a stone-cold masterpiece.”

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The Dark and Puzzling Present: The Medusa Deep, Book 2 of The Midnight Games by David Neil Lee

The Dark and Puzzling Present: The Medusa Deep, Book 2 of The Midnight Games by David Neil Lee

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The Midnight Games (Wolsak and Wynn, 2016) and its sequel
The Medusa Deep (Poplar Press, 2021). Covers by Rachel Rosen, unknown

In his first guest post for Black Gate way back in 2016, The Midnight Games and Why I Wrote Them, David Neil Lee talked about his debut novel and the sequel he hoped to write some day.

For the past twelve years my family and I have lived a couple of blocks from Ivor Wynne, the local football stadium, and we hear all the noise from the Tiger Cats games. So I began a novel in which my protagonist hears a racket from the stadium at night, which he thinks of as “midnight games.” However, they are not games at all, but the cruel ceremonies of a local cult which is trying to summon to earth the Great Old Ones of the H.P. Lovecraft Cthulhu Mythos; trying with what turns out to be a fair degree of success….

What sort of monsters does the cult summon? — well how about those hideous prickly house centipedes that I scoop out of the bathtub of our old house from spring till fall every year. I don’t kill them, I put them in a jar and throw them in a garden — what if they were some sort of hmm, spawn of Yog-Sothoth, summoned here by the games? What about if one of them thrived in our garden, and grew and grew and grew?

I know what you’re thinking. “Dammit that sounds like fun. Why don’t I do that?” Well, if you’re a Black Gate reader, chances are that you do do that…

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Exciting Storytelling from one of the Best Writers of Heroic Fantasy: When the Goddess Wakes by Howard Andrew Jones

Exciting Storytelling from one of the Best Writers of Heroic Fantasy: When the Goddess Wakes by Howard Andrew Jones

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When the Goddess Wakes (St. Martin’s Press, August 2021). Cover by Lauren Saint-Onge

Whenever a trilogy wraps up, we bake a cake in the Black Gate offices. When that trilogy belongs to our own Howard Andrew Jones, our first Managing Editor, we bake a cake in the shape of the world of Amber. (No, we don’t know how it turned out. The damn cake keeps vanishing.)

When the Goddess Wakes, the final novel in Howard’s Ring-Sworn Trilogy, follows For the Killing of Kings (2018) and Upon the Flight of the Queen (2019). In his review of the first volume here at Black Gate, Fletcher Vredenburgh said “It moves at an astounding pace… This is exciting storytelling from one of the best and most knowledgeable writers of heroic fantasy.” Seth Lindberg proclaimed the second volume is “reminiscent of Zelazny… I was completely floored.” And in a starred review, Publishers Weekly called the final volume an “emotional roller coaster.”

When the Goddess Wakes was published on August 24th by St. Martin’s Press, and it brings to a close one of the most original and exciting fantasy series of the 21st Century. You owe it to yourself to check it out. And when you do, visit us again to share your thoughts. Pick up a copy today.

Vintage Treasures: Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 10: Ghosts edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

Vintage Treasures: Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 10: Ghosts edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

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Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of Fantasy 10: Ghosts (Signet/New American Library, 1988). Cover by J. K. Potter

Isaac Asimov had a lot of gifts. He was a world famous polymath, a marvelous science explainer and popularizer, and a pretty darned skilled writer of science fiction. But he doesn’t get a lot of credit for one of his greatest talents, a skill in short supply even today: The man knew how to sell anthologies.

After some of his early SF anthologies became enduring top-sellers, often remaining in print for decades (including The Hugo Winners, Volume I and II, Before the Golden Age, and Where Do We Go From Here), publishers discovered that the name Isaac Asimov on the cover of an anthology almost guaranteed it would sell.

Asimov exploited this heavily for the remainder of his career, lending his fame to many important anthology series, often co-created with frequent collaborators Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh. These include The Great Science Fiction Stories (25 volumes in 23 years), Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction (10 volumes in 8 years), and Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Fantasy (12 volumes in 9 years). It’s that last one we’re going to look at today, with one of the final volumes: Ghosts, published by Signet in 1988.

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The Nexus of Horror: An Interview With Paula Guran

The Nexus of Horror: An Interview With Paula Guran

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Paula Guran is one of the most accomplished editors in the business. She began with Dark Echo, one of the first email newsletters, which she created in 1994; her 49th anthology, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: Volume Two, will be published by Pyr Books on October 19th.

I sat down with Paula this morning to talk about her new book, and discovered she had a lot to say — lively anecdotes from a two-decade career, what it is about horror that keeps her coming back, how the pandemic has affected modern horror, the best new novels of the past few years, and the amazing writers we should all be paying more attention to.

It was a lively and enormously entertaining discussion with one of the most wildly read and keen-eyed observers of the industry, a woman who’s demonstrated an uncanny talent for spotting and showcasing some of the most talented new writers working today. Check out the entire 35-minute interview here.