Browsed by
Category: BG Staff

B&N on 10 Science Fiction & Fantasy Debuts to Watch for in the Second Half of 2016

B&N on 10 Science Fiction & Fantasy Debuts to Watch for in the Second Half of 2016

Comments 0 Comment

An Accident of Stars-smallWho doesn’t love a good debut novel? Science fiction and fantasy are all about discovering new and wonderful things… and what’s more new and wonderful than discovering a great new writer, capable of transporting you to amazing worlds?

Last month at the Barnes & Noble blog, Ross Johnson compiled a terrific list of 10 particularly promising debut novels of SF & fantasy. Over the last few weeks, I’ve read and seen enough to know that Johnson has a very keen eye. For example, here’s what he says about An Accident of Stars, the upcoming novel by Black Gate blogger Foz Meadows.

Hugo-nominated fan writer Foz Meadows’ hotly anticipated adult debut tells the story of Saffron Coulter, who falls through a looking glass of sorts into a richly detailed world of magic and intrigue. Saffron is quickly embroiled in a civil war lead by another Earth-born visitor, one who sorely regrets providing aid to the fantasy kingdom’s ruler, Leoden, recent claimant to the throne. The story is as much about the complex relationships between a large cast of (mostly) women characters as it is about the building and exploring the realm of Kena.

An Accident of Stars, Book I of The Manifold World, will be published in mass market paperback by Angry Robot on August 2, 2016. It is 496 pages, priced at $7.99, or $6.99 for the digital edition. Our previous coverage of the B&N blog includes:

Barnes and Noble Calls Out the 20 Best Paranormal Fantasy Novels of the last Decade
Spotlight on Barnes & Noble “Get Pop-Cultured” Month
Breathtaking and Truly Epic: Barnes & Noble on Michael Livingston’s The Shards of Heaven
Barnes and Noble Picks the Best SF and Fantasy of 2015
Barnes & Noble’s Fantasy Picks for March
Barnes & Noble on 7 Essential New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Story Collections

Johnson’s list also includes novels by Indra Das, David D. Levine, Keith Yatsuhashi, and J. Patrick Black. Check out the complete list here.

Announcing the 2016 Robert E. Howard Foundation Award Winners

Announcing the 2016 Robert E. Howard Foundation Award Winners

Comments 5 comments

The Robert E. Howard Foundation

The winners of the 2016 Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards were announced earlier this month at the REH Days celebration in Cross Plains, Texas. Several Black Gate contributors were honored with nominations this year, including Barbara Barrett, Bob Byrne, Howard Andrew Jones, and Bill Ward:

The Cimmerian — Outstanding Achievement, Essay (Online)

BARRETT, BARBARA – “Hester Jane Ervin Howard and Tuberculosis (3 parts)” REH: Two Gun Raconteur Blog (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

The Stygian — Outstanding Achievement, Website

BLACK GATE (John O’Neill)

The Black River — Special Achievement

BYRNE, BOB – For organizing the “Discovering REH” blog post series at Black Gate

JONES, HOWARD ANDREW and BILL WARD – For their “Re-Reading Conan” series at howardandrewjones.com

The REH Foundation Awards honor the top contributions from the previous year in Howard scholarship and in the promotion of Howard’s life and works. The top three nominees in each category were selected by the Legacy Circle members of the Foundation and the winners were voted on by the full membership of the Foundation.

The complete list of winners follows.

…

Read More Read More

Deities and Demigods of the Word Count: or, How to Write 500 Novels and Still not be Considered Prolific

Deities and Demigods of the Word Count: or, How to Write 500 Novels and Still not be Considered Prolific

Comments 5 comments
Nice book, but where are the 800 others you lazy git?
Nice book, but where are the 800 others you lazy git?

Last week, M Harold Page posted an interesting article here on Black Gate about achieving a steady word count as a writer, giving some insights into his own practice. He said,

I manage 1,000 words a day at the start and an average of 3,000 words a day once I’m underway. Sprinting – 5,000 to 7,000 words a day; that’s for the last half.

Many newbie writers would screech in horror and say no one can write that fast, while most MFA snobs would turn up their noses and say it’s impossible to write anything of worth at that rate, that writing must be an agonizing process of constant revision and polishing. They’re both wrong, as Page’s own writing attests.

The fact is, however, Page’s speed is rather modest. Mine is about the same, so I’m not knocking him. I know how hard it is to keep up a good momentum while maintaining your responsibilities to family, not to mention the distractions of the Internet and local pub. I’m fortunate enough that writing is my day job, so at least I don’t have a separate career getting in the way of my productivity.

Page and I may both have a bunch of books to our name, but we are mere henchmen, mere spear carriers to the great Deities and Demigods of publishing — the truly prolific. Dean Wesley Smith, who has written well over 100 novels and about 500 short stories and only seems to be picking up speed, recently shared a link to an interesting blog post titled 17 Most Prolific Writers in History. I have a lot of quibbles with this list, as I’m sure you will too, but while it isn’t authoritative or entirely accurate, it’s certainly inspiring and daunting in equal measure.

…

Read More Read More

Barnes & Noble on 7 Essential New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Story Collections

Barnes & Noble on 7 Essential New Sci-Fi & Fantasy Short Story Collections

Comments 0 Comment

A Natural History of Hell-smallThe Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog continues to be a great source of recs for the discerning reader. They had a fine summary of the Best SF and Fantasy of 2015, and their monthly list of the best new books on the shelves is an excellent resource (our most recent look was back in March, when their list included Myke Cole’s Javelin Rain and Adrian Selby’s Snakewood.)

This week Sam Reader takes a look at seven recent SF and fantasy short story collections, including Kelly Link’s Get in Trouble, Joan Aiken’s The People in the Castle, and Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories. His list also includes the latest collection from Jeffrey Ford, whose spectacular story “Exo-Skeleton Town” was one of the most memorable tales in Black Gate 1. Here’s Sam’s description of A Natural History of Hell: Stories.

Jeffrey Ford is probably writing your dreams. It’s the best way to describe his surreal style, which frequently relies on an internal structure and logic to convey images that teeter between odd fantasy and unsettling horror, while remaining impossibly grounded in a tangible reality. A Natural History of Hell (out in July) goes to some odd places, with genre-bending stories about artists trapped on a rocket ship, imaginary serial murderers, and God being torn apart by an angry mob, but it leaves plenty of room for beauty, however dark. It also contains one of my personal favorite stories from last year, “Word Doll,” in which children are lured into a world of make-believe. If you’re looking for something you haven’t seen before, look no further than these 13 stories.

Standout stories: “A Rocket Ship to Hell,” “The Blameless.”

A Natural History of Hell: Stories will be published by Small Beer Press on July 26, 2016. It is 256 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback.

See the complete article at the B&N Sci-Fi and Fantasy Blog.

New Treasures: Confluence by Paul McAuley

New Treasures: Confluence by Paul McAuley

Comments 0 Comment

Confluence Paul McAuley-smallI’ve found a number of online sellers offering brand new copies of recent British SF and fantasy books very inexpensively (essentially, at remainder prices), and I’ve been taking advantage of them. My most recent purchases include Paul McAuley’s In the Mouth of the Whale (the third volume in his far-future series The Quiet War), and the massive omnibus volume Confluence, which contains his complete trilogy. And I do mean massive — just take a look at the thing (click the image at right for a more lifesize version). At 935 pages, it proudly stands all on its own on my end table (and darn near tips it over).

Paul McAuley was an early columnist for Black Gate (his fantasy review column On the Edge appeared in our early print issues). The omnibus volume contains three complete novels, all originally published in hardcover in the US by Avon EOS:

Child of the River (1997)
Ancients of Days (1998)
Shrine of Stars (1999)

Here’s the description:

Confluence — a long, narrow, artificial world, half fertile river valley, half crater-strewn desert. A world beyond the end of human history, served by countless machines, inhabited by 10,000 bloodlines who worship their absent creators, riven by a vast war against heretics.

This is the home of Yama, found as an infant in a white boat on the world’s Great River, raised by an obscure bureaucrat in an obscure town in the middle of a ruined necropolis, destined to become a clerk — until the discovery of his singular ancestry. For Yama appears to be the last remaining scion of the Builders, closest of all races to the revered architects of Confluence, able to awaken and control the secret machineries of the world.

Pursued by enemies who want to make use of his powers, Yama voyages down the length of the world to search for answers to the mysteries of his origin, and to discover if he is to be the saviour of his world, or its nemesis.

Confluence was published by Gollancz in August 2015. It is 935 pages, priced at £16.99 in trade paperback and $15.99 for the digital edition. I bought my copy from Media Universe for $12.14 plus $3.99 shipping (and In the Mouth of the Whale from the same vendor for $2.95). Copies of both are still available.

Mighty Pirate Kingdoms, Weather Wizards, and Quarrelsome Ghosts: Sarah Avery’s The Imlen Brat

Mighty Pirate Kingdoms, Weather Wizards, and Quarrelsome Ghosts: Sarah Avery’s The Imlen Brat

Comments 8 comments

The Imlen Brat-small

To me, The Imlen Brat will always be the story that got away.

After I bought “The War of the Wheat Berry Year” from Sarah Avery (it appeared in Black Gate 15), I begged her to send me something new. She responded in spectacular fashion, with a dynamite novella called “The Imlen Bastard.” It was a marvelous tale of mighty pirate kingdoms, weather wizards, quarrelsome ghosts, secret magics, and deadly court intrigue, all seen through the eyes of an adopted daughter in an enemy royal house. I told Sarah I wanted to buy it, and happily set the wheels in motion to publish it.

Alas, it was not to be. BG 15 was our final issue, and I was forced to return all the fiction I was holding for future issues — including “The Imlen Bastard.” Scarcely three years later, Sarah won the Mythopoeic Award for her first book, Tales from Rugosa Coven, and the world finally began to realize that Sarah was  a major new talent. Her successful Kickstarter to self-publish the novella wrapped up late last year (see her blog post about it all, “Kickstarting a Belated Black Gate Story: The Imlen Bastard“), and the book, now known as The Imlen Brat, is inching closer to release. Last month Sarah shared the gorgeous final cover design (above), saying:

This morning the book designers sent me a proof of the cover design, and it looks like just the kind of book I’d pick up if I saw it on the bookstore shelf… As a thank-you for email list subscribers, I’m offering a free short story ebook, a spin-off about Stisele, the heroine of The Imlen Brat. For at least the next three years, this story will be available only to my list subscribers.

The Imlen Brat will be released later this summer. The cover art is by Kate Baylay, and the cover was designed by designforwriters.com. Click on the image above for a bigger version, and subscribe to Sarah’s e-mail list here to get the free 9,000-word story, “The Enemy in Snowmelt Season.”

The Return of Dabir and Asim

The Return of Dabir and Asim

Comments 4 comments

the-desert-of-souls UK-smallHoward Andrew Jones sent me a letter in the very early days of Black Gate. It was articulate and delightful, and I remember it well. He welcomed the magazine to the fold, speaking enthusiastically about our focus on classic adventure fantasy. He also included a story featuring two characters of his own creation, Dabir and Asim, sleuths and adventurers who strode the crowded streets and dark ways of ninth century Arabia, facing dark sorcery and ancient evils, armed only with their wits and cold steel.

Dabir and Asim had many adventures together. I bought two of those tales for Black Gate — “Sight of Vengeance” (BG 10), and “Whispers from the Stone,” (BG 12) — and they became some of the most popular stories we ever published. Dabir and Asim appeared in two novels, The Desert of Souls and Bones of the Old Ones, one collection, The Waters of Eternity, and many other places (such as the awesome Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters anthology), before Howard turned his talents to other worthy endeavors. But you can’t keep great characters down for long, and on his blog yesterday Howard announced the return of Dabir and Asim in a brand new tale — and hinted at further adventures in the works.

For the first time this year I’ve sold a short story. I’m delighted to relay that the upcoming Skelos magazine will be carrying a never-before-published Dabir and Asim story in its second issue! You can see magazine details here and there is, briefly, still time to get in on its kickstarter.

I still fully plan to finish writing at least one more Dabir and Asim novel. If I can actually maintain the pace with this current set of drafts, I hope to find time to create a new Dabir and Asim every other year or so and market it as an e-book.

Welcome back, lads! You were missed.

Read our own coverage of the exciting launch of Skelos here, and Howard’s complete announcement on his blog.

Read the Best of Matthew David Surridge in Once Only Imagined: Collected Reviews, Vol II

Read the Best of Matthew David Surridge in Once Only Imagined: Collected Reviews, Vol II

Comments 1 comment

Once Only Imagined Matthew David Surridge-smallMatthew David Surridge is Black Gate‘s most successful blogger, both in terms of critical and popular success (his post “A Detailed Explanation,” on why he declined a Hugo nomination last year, is the most popular article in our history). He’s also one of our most prolific, with 270 articles to his credit, and he’s had more reprinted than anyone else on our staff. Of course, that’s mostly due to last year’s Reading Strange Matters, which collected 24 of his posts, chiefly focusing on 21st Century writers.

Reading Strange Matters was successful enough to encourage his publishers to produce a second volume, Once Only Imagined, released last week. It collects another 30 articles, with a slightly different focus than last year’s book. Matthew is our sure-footed guide to the true origins of modern fantasy, tracing them through the twisted maze of late 20th Century publishing to the nearly-forgotten fantasy masters of the era. Here’s Matthew, from his introduction.

My first collection of essays about fantasy fiction, Reading Strange Matters, looked at books from the twenty-first century. This second one moves back in time, to the second half of the twentieth… There was a revival of sword-and-sorcery adventure fiction at about this time, relatively short novels focused on plot, action, and violence. And Ballantine Books reprinted several pre-Tolkien fantasies under the editorship of writer and fan Lin Carter. But many of the fantasy novels published in the 1960s and 1970s had a veneer of science fiction about them — their setting explained as another planet (as in the case of Andre Norton’s Witch World and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series), or their magic explained as pseudo-scientific psionic powers (as in Katherine Kurtz’ Deryni series).

1977 is usually cited as the year when everything changed, with the publication of Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara and Stephen R. Donaldson’s Lord Foul’s Bane ushering in a new age of commercial fantasy fiction. This ignores several important predecessors, I feel, not only Norton, McCaffrey, and Kurtz, but also Patricia McKillip, whose The Riddle-Master of Hed came out in 1976. I think the form that eventually developed for commercial fantasy was shaped in part by these books… Writers like Raymond Feist and David and Leigh Eddings (the first few of whose books were published under David Eddings’ name alone) soon had popular series as well…

Still, it’d be wrong to think of the fantasy genre of the 1980s as populated entirely by Tolkien knock-offs. Some writers were trying to do new things, and some idiosyncratic books were published as the genre developed. Writers like Glen Cook, with his Black Company series, challenged the new conventions with gritty stories set in a pseudo-medieval world but told in a very modern tone.

Matthew’s knowledge of fantasy is breathtaking, and his deep insights into the evolution of the genre — and many of its greatest and most neglected works — are profoundly illuminating. At $3 for the digital edition, it’s the best purchase you’ll make all year.

…

Read More Read More

A Downed Pilot, a Mad Duke, and a Riddle in the Grove of Monsters: A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin

A Downed Pilot, a Mad Duke, and a Riddle in the Grove of Monsters: A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin

Comments 0 Comment

A Green and Ancient Light Frederic S. Durbin-small

To my left, dwarf iris. To my right, lilacs. All around me, sunlight. Because truly, the only appropriate location to write a review of Frederic S. Durbin’s latest novel, A Green and Ancient Light, is in a garden with a blue sky above and a wisteria-tinged wind teasing by.

OK, OK. A sacred wood would also be suitable… but they are harder to find in Iowa. What’s not hard to find in Iowa? Cornfields. Which is where I procured my copy of A Green and Ancient Light, after it was shot there by a trebuchet. The book smelled of clouds after I ripped the package open. If you doubt me, I have a notice typed by Durbin himself on a 1935 L.C. Smith 8 to prove it.

Do I squeal now or later? How about always. I LOVE THIS BOOK. It left me breathless. I didn’t want to move after I finished it. Moving meant breaking a beautiful moment. Moving meant stepping out of the sublime. Moving meant letting go of a village that I wanted to live in. A Green and Ancient Light is SO GOOD.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin

Future Treasures: A Green and Ancient Light by Frederic S. Durbin

Comments 0 Comment

A Green and Ancient Light-smallFred Durbin is one of the most gifted fantasists at work today, and a new Durbin novel is a major event. Set in a world similar to our own, during a war that parallels World War II, A Green and Ancient Light is the tale of a boy sent to stay with his grandmother, until the crash of an enemy plane disrupts his idyllic summer and leads him to discover a riddle in the sacred grove of ruins behind his grandmother’s house.

As planes darken the sky and cities burn in the ravages of war, a boy is sent away to the safety of an idyllic fishing village far from the front, to stay with the grandmother he does not know. But their tranquility is shattered by the crash of a bullet-riddled enemy plane that brings the war — and someone else — to their doorstep. Grandmother’s mysterious friend, Mr. Girandole, who is far more than he seems, has appeared out of the night to ask Grandmother for help in doing the unthinkable.

In the forest near Grandmother’s cottage lies a long-abandoned garden of fantastic statues, a grove of monsters, where sunlight sets the leaves aglow and the movement at the corner of your eye may just be fairy magic. Hidden within is a riddle that has lain unsolved for centuries — a riddle that contains the only solution to their impossible problem. To solve it will require courage, sacrifice, and friendship with the most unlikely allies.

Fred is also the author of The Star Shard and Dragonfly. His story “World’s End” appeared in Black Gate 15. Patty Templeton interviewed Fred for us after the publication of The Star Shard, and Nick Ozment teamed with him to explore the magic of Halloween in Oz and Frederic S. Durbin Discuss Hallowe’en Monsters. We did a Cover Reveal for A Green and Ancient Light in November, including Fred’s thoughts on the art.

A Green and Ancient Light will be published by Saga Press on June 7, 2016. It is 300 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition.