Black Gate

The big May/June issue of F&SF comes packed with stories by Gardner Dozois, Lisa Mason, Matthew Hughes (a new Argent and Sable tale), Albert E. Cowdrey, Black Gate writer Nina Kiriki Hoffman, and many others — all under a magnificent cover by Alan D. Clark illustrating “The Barrens” by Stephanie Feldman, featuring a group of high school students searching for a pirate radio station transmitting from the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, and the supernatural menaces they encounter on the way.

Victoria Silverwolf at Tangent Online calls the issue “an even balance of science fiction and fantasy… [with] a wide variety of imaginative literature.” Here’s a snippet of her review.

“Unstoppable” by Gardner Dozois concerns a prince obsessed with becoming the greatest warrior in the world. After murdering his way to the throne, he uses magic to become indestructible. It all leads to an ironic ending. This is an enjoyable tale, if hardly profound.

“Crash-Site” by Brian Trent takes place on a distant planet in the far future. Various characters are after a weapon recovered from a starship that crashed on the planet centuries ago. The main appeal of this science fiction adventure story is its technologically advanced setting.

Set in the 1920s or 1930s, “What You Pass For” by Melanie West involves magic white paint, which allows a man to give his fellow African-Americans the physical characteristics of Caucasians. He hates and fears his unwanted ability, and refuses to use it on himself, although this condemns him to a life of poverty. A dancer, forbidden to join a ballet company because of her race, demands the use of this power, even though she is already very light-skinned. This is a powerful story about appearances and reality.

“Ku’gbo” by Nigerian writer Dare Segun Falowo is a dense, complex fantasy with a plot difficult to summarize. Suffice to say that it takes place in an African village which is no ordinary community, and that it begins with a boy seeking to protect food from invisible rams. The many supernatural events and beings that fill the plot, and the author’s fondness for metaphors, make this a story which must be read slowly and carefully to appreciate its uniqueness.

Set in modern New Orleans, “Behold the Child” by Albert E. Cowdrey depicts an unscrupulous lawyer who uses a telekinetic little boy to kill his enemies. A rival lawyer and a private detective, both telepathic, fight to end his reign of terror. The narrative tone is often light, contrasting oddly with the story’s violence. The ending comes as an unpleasant surprise.

Read Victoria’s complete review here.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents of the May/June 2017 issue.

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Lots of great reading for fiction fans in April, including new stories by Black Gate writers John R. Fultz, Mike Resnick, and Nina Kiriki Hoffman, plus Sarah Pinsker, Cassandra Khaw, Nalo Hopkinson, Rob Vagle, Ray Vukcevich, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Marissa Lingen, Sarah Monette, Will McIntosh, Timothy Mudie, Adam-Troy Castro, Rich Larson, Jiang Bo, O’Neil De Noux, Jerry Oltion, Steve Perry, and lots more.

The big news this month is the return of Pulphouse in a brand new quarterly, Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, edited by Dean Wesley Smith, and the continuing success of its sister publication Fiction River, an Original Fiction Anthology edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, which just released in 27th bimonthly issue, a 296-page Justice-themed volume. I’m also very pleased to see issue #5 of Dark Fantasy magazine The Audient Void, and the special 50th Anniversary issue of Locus.

Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in April (links will bring you to magazine websites).

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I tell myself that I read Asimov’s SF primarily for the fiction, but the fact is that I always flip to the same things first, issue after issue: Sheila Williams’ always-thoughtful editorial, and Robert Silverberg’s excellent Reflections column. In the March/April issue Bob’s article, Rereading Fletcher Pratt, is particularly fascinating, as he discusses Pratt’s 1948 fantasy classic The Well of the Unicorn.

I have just reread Well of the Unicorn with the same admiration and delight as before, and find myself regretting that this great fantasy writer is now just about completely unknown to today’s readers… Pratt’s primary reputation as a writer of historical works carried the book into disaster from the first moment of publication. Instead of taking it to one of the small publishing companies specializing then in fantasy and science fiction, which might not have been receptive to anything so esoteric in manner, he brought it to the mainstream house of William Sloane Associates, a short-lived company with strong literary predilections. They made the catastrophic decision to publish the book not under Pratt’s name (which was associated mainly with his works of military history), but under a new byline entirely, “George U. Fletcher,” a pseudonym used for the one and only time here. Thus, at a single stroke, the novel was cut off from the readers of Pratt’s previous fiction, particularly the well-beloved Harold Shea stories, and from those readers of his books of history who might have been attracted to a work of fantasy that reflected his knowledge of warfare. Bookstores and reviewers thus had no idea of how to deal with the book, and although Sloane put it out in an elegant edition with a handsome jacket and many internal maps, it sank out of sight instantly and not long after publication day arrived at the remainder tables, where I, a high-school student at the time, happily bought a copy for fifty-nine cents. (I knew about the book, despite the opacity of the “Fletcher” byline, because Sprague de Camp had done his old collaborator a favor by reviewing it in Astounding Science Fiction, calling it “a colorful and fast-moving adventure fantasy” that any connoisseur of fantasy would want to have, and hinting broadly and unmistakably at the identity of its author.)

So I laid out my fifty-nine cents (not all that inconsiderable a sum back then) and bought the book, and read it immediately, and loved it, though I was not really a “connoisseur of fantasy” and indeed rather preferred science fiction. I thought it was just grand. And have cherished it ever since.

If you act fast (before the May/June issue arrives on April 24) you can read Bob’s complete column online here.

This issue has a “blockbuster novella” from Black Gate author — and my former Motorola colleague — Bill Johnson (“Mama Told Me Not to Come,” BG 4), the long-awaited sequel to his Hugo Award-winning story “We Will Drink a Fish Together.” Plus a second novella, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and stories by Robert Reed, James Gunn, Rich Larson, Mary Robinette Kowal, James Van Pelt, and more. Here’s editor Sheila Williams’ issue summary.

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