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New Treasures: Aetheria by S. Hutson Blount

New Treasures: Aetheria by S. Hutson Blount

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Aetheria-smallS. Hutson Blount’s short story “The Laws of Chaos Left Us All in Disarray” appeared in the last print issue of Black Gate. A fast-paced adventure tale of a mercenary’s desperate attempts to protect a secretive group of pilgrims, it was one of the most popular pieces in the issue.

We met up with Stephen at the 2012 World Science Fiction Convention here in Chicago, and he turned out to be as entertaining in person as he is on the page. So I was delighted to discover that his first novel, Aetheria, had arrived this week. The story of an extremely resourceful con artist in a galaxy filled with competing empires, pirates, ice miners and more dangerous things, Aetheria has already shot to the top of my to-be-read pile.

Aetheria Peregrine set out for a career as a merchant spacer — a career cut short in a whirlwind of events. Caught up in the tumult of planetary empires set against each other, she must by turns become a pirate, doctor, ice miner, drug dealer, vagabond, mystic, spy, secret policewoman, pilgrim, fugitive, heiress, scholar, and diplomat.

She faces the opportunities and dangers of a hostile galaxy armed with the only things she can depend on: her wits, her unquenchable drive for love and success, and the flexible ethics of a practiced conwoman.

Befriended, betrayed, recruited, exiled, and more in the course of her travels, Aetheria can be anything except stopped.

Aetheria was published on March 12, 2015. It is 298 pages, priced at just $2.99 in digital format. Buy it today at Amazon.com.

See all the latest publications from Black Gate‘s writers and staff here.

Lawrence Schick Expands on the Origins of TSR’s The Known World

Lawrence Schick Expands on the Origins of TSR’s The Known World

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Gods Demi-Gods & Heroes-small“The “Known World” D&D Setting: A Secret History,” Lawrence Schick’s fascinating look behind the scenes at the home-grown adventure world that eventually became TSR’s famed Known World campaign setting, one of the earliest published settings for Dungeons and Dragons, was our most popular article last month, read by thousands of old school gamers.

Interest in the piece continues to be high and last week James Mishler, who painstakingly produced color versions of Lawrence’s original hand-drawn maps, conducted a detailed Q&A with Lawrence on his blog, Adventures in Gaming V2. The questions range from how much inspiration Tom Moldvay and Lawrence drew from the original D&D supplement Gods, Demigods & Heroes for their pantheon, to the influence of Lin Carter and Michael Moorcock. Here’s a snippet.

You mentioned an “ancient, pre-human civilization.” Do you recall any details about this? Related, do you recall if Tom Moldvay’s creation, the Carnifex of M3: Twilight Calling, were based on the Dragon Kings from Lin Carter’s Thongor series?

The pre-human civilizations were misty, with contradictory legends about them. Tom’s Carnifex were not based on Carter’s Dragon Kings, IIRC. (Neither of us thought very highly of the Thongor novels, though we admired Carter’s work as an editor.)

The influences from Howard, Lovecraft, and Smith are fairly obvious. But what, if any influence of Moorcock can be found in the Original Known World? Were the alignments of the OKW strongly in the Moorcock tradition?

We weren’t all that big on alignment, actually — it seemed to us, even then, to be an oversimplification that was more restrictive than it was useful. Moorcock’s real influence on us was the example of his anti-heroes, which freed us up to put moral choices in the hands of the players, rather than hard-wiring the world into good vs. evil.

Read the complete Q&A here.

Uncanny Magazine Issue 3 Now on Sale

Uncanny Magazine Issue 3 Now on Sale

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Uncanny Magazine 3-smallThe third issue of Uncanny Magazine is now on sale, with a cover that caused me to do a bit of a double take. I’m not entirely sure if it depicts a plucky adventuress assisting a monster in distress, a strange sexual romp in a pastoral field, or something else entirely. The artist is Carrie Ann Baade, and the title of the work (Unspeakable #2) doesn’t help. Click on the image at left for a bigger version, and make up your own mind.

Whatever the case, the new issue has a stellar line up, with all-new short fiction by Sofia Samatar, Rosamund Hodge, Emily Devenport, a classic reprint by Ellen Klages, and more. Here’s the complete fiction contents:

“The Lamps Thereof Are Fire and Flames,” by Rosamund Hodge
“Translatio Corporis,” by Kat Howard
‘Ivory Darts, Golden Arrows,” by Maria Dahvana Headley
“Those,” by Sofia Samatar
“When the Circus Lights Down,” by Sarah Pinsker
“Dr. Polingyouma’s Machine,” by Emily Devenport
“In the House of the Seven Librarians,” by Ellen Klages
“You Are Two Point Three Meters from Your Destination,” by Fran Wilde

Nonfiction this issues is by Ytasha L. Womack, Stephanie Zvan, Amal El–Mohtar, and L.M. Myles. There are also poems by Jennifer Crow, M Sereno, and our very own C.S.E. Cooney, and interviews with Sofia Samatar, C.S.E. Cooney, and Ellen Klages.

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Weirdbook Relaunches

Weirdbook Relaunches

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Weirdbook 22-smallW. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook, one of the all-time great weird fiction magazines, will be relaunched this year by David A. Riley and Black Gate blogger Douglas Draa‎.

Weirdbook, a large-sized magazine with excellent production values, produced thirty annual issues between 1968 and 1997, publishing fiction by Stephen King, Joseph Payne Brennan, H. Warner Munn, Robert E. Howard, Tim Powers, Darrell Schweitzer, Basil Wells, Charles R. Saunders, Michael Bishop, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Ramsey Campbell, Delia Sherman, and countless others. The magazine was also famous for its gorgeous interior artwork by Gene Day, Victoria Poyser, J. K. Potter, Allen Koszowski, Stephen E. Fabian, and many others.

Douglas Draa, a prolific blogger and the former Online Editor for Weird Tales, is the Managing Editor and Fiction editor; Riley has signed on as Senior Editor and Publisher. When I asked Doug for additional details he shared this with us:

We’ll closely, but not slavishly, follow the original format. Content wise we hope to have a strong mix of weird, horror, weird-sf, dark fantasy, swords & sorcery, and everything in between. The accent will be on strong story telling that the reader will enjoy. The eclectic mix of style and sub-genres that the original was famous will be our “leitfaden.” Paul is on board as Editor Emeritus with “kill-switch” powers to keep us on the straight and narrow.

Our goal is to bring the reader high quality genre fiction original in the Weirdbook tradition. The key word will be entertainment. Critics be damned.

On a personal note, W. Paul Ganley and Weirdbook were a big influence on me, and a major inspiration for Black Gate. I was consciously following in Paul’s footsteps when I launched BG 15 years ago, and I’m very excited to see his magazine return. For more details, see Doug’s announcement here, and the magazines’s new website here.

Future Treasures: Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge

Future Treasures: Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge

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Crimson Bound-smallRosamund Hodge’s short story “Apotheosis” (Black Gate 15) was a marvelously original tale of three brothers who undertake a voyage across a vast sea only six inches deep, to find a new god for their small village. Her first novel, Cruel Beauty, mixed Greek mythology with Beauty and the Beast to create a tale of adventure and romance (read the first 59 pages at the HarperCollins Web Sampler).

Her second novel, Crimson Bound, is due May 5 from Balzer + Bray. This one is a dark fantasy inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, the fairy tale The Girl With No Hands, and Norse mythology.

When Rachelle was fifteen she was good — apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless — straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat.

Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in a vain effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand — the man she hates most — Rachelle forces Armand to help her hunt for the legendary sword that might save their world. Together, they navigate the opulent world of the courtly elite, where beauty and power reign and no one can be trusted. And as the two become unexpected allies, they discover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic… and a love that may be their undoing. Within a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?

Crimson Bound goes on sale on May 5 from Balzer + Bray. It is 448 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover, and $9.99 for the digital version.

New Treasures: Swords of Steel edited by D.M. Ritzlin

New Treasures: Swords of Steel edited by D.M. Ritzlin

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Swords of Steel-smallSwords of Steel is a brand new sword & sorcery anthology edited by D.M. Ritzlin, filled with stories written exclusively by heavy metal musicians. In his introduction, David C. Smith says the “idea was to create a collection of the kinds of stories you would have found in the late 1960s and 1970s — in the Swords Against Darkness anthologies, for example.” I’m a fan of Andrew Offut’s Swords Against Darkness, and I heartily approve of any effort to recapture their spirit.

Swords of Steel is an anthology of fantasy/horror adventure stories; it  includes interior illustrations and maps by a variety of artists, and poems by Sean Weingartner. There’s also an artilcle, “Headbanging Warriors,” by Black Gate‘s Thursday blogger  M Harold Page.

Mighty-thewed barbarians… vengeful lords of chaos… desolate devil-haunted ruins… carnage-soaked battlefields… forbidden spells of great power… All of these you will find in the works of authors of heroic fantasy as well as heavy metal musicians. But modern fantasy has been plagued with convoluted plots and series without end. Who better to return traditional fantasy to its former glory than the heavy metal bards?

Swords of Steel is an anthology of fantastic and horrific adventure stories, each penned by a heavy metal musician. Members of such bands as Bal-Sagoth, Manilla Road, Twisted Tower Dire, Cauldron Born, Solstice, and more — proving their talent for the written word as well as song — cut through the modern wasteland, wielding Swords of Steel.

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Bernie Mireault: The Forgotten Herald of the Modern

Bernie Mireault: The Forgotten Herald of the Modern

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Bernie MireaultOver the weekend, Mark Shainblum pointed me towards columnist Timothy Callahan’s article in Comic Book Resources discussing the work of artist Bernie Mireault. It’s been around for a while, but I’d managed to miss it, so I appreciated the link. Here’s a snippet:

If we look around the axis of American superhero comics, at the groundbreaking Modern work produced in the mid-1980s, it’s the same four or five names that keep popping up in our conversations: Alan Moore, Frank Miller, Rick Veitch, Howard Chaykin, maybe Matt Wagner. These were the creators who changed the landscape of American superhero comics, for better or worse. They heralded the Modern.

Yet there’s one creator who doesn’t get mentioned nearly as often. A writer/artist who was combining the high Romanticism of the fantastic with the mundane life on the street as well as any of the others. A comic book creator whose visual style has rarely been duplicated… I’m talking, of course, about Bernie Mireault.

Mireault (rhymes with “Zero”) has been working continuously in the comic book industry for the past 24 years, but he gets almost none of the acclaim given to his peers… in the mid-to-late 1980s and early 1990s, Mireault produced or helped produce three essential texts of the Modern era, and it’s time those three books were given their due.

I first met Bernie in 1985, when he crashed at my home in Ottawa, Canada, while attending a local comic convention. I was impressed with him immediately — especially his groundbreaking work on the hilarious Mackenzie Queen for Matrix Comics. He’s extrememly gifted as a comedic artist, and his character design is second to none — as you can see from his marvelous panel illustrating “The Loiterer in the Lobby” by Michael Kaufmann and Mark McLaughlin for Black Gate 4 (above). I hired Bernie as an illustrator when I launched Black Gate, and he graced virtually every issue of the print magazine. I profiled him back in 2009, and Matthew David Surridge wrote a detailed review of his excellent comic The Jam last December. His other work includes Grendel (with Matt Wagner), The Blair Witch Chronicles, and Dr. Robot.

Read the complete CBR article here.

Black Static #44 Now on Sale

Black Static #44 Now on Sale

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Black Static 44-smallI stumbled on my first copy of Black Static, issue #40, at a Barnes and Noble here in Chicago last year, and I was very impressed. The magazine is beautifully designed and illustrated, with top-notch writing and some great columns. It’s exactly the kind of thing I like to take with me on long plane rides.

I’ve been tracking down subsequent issues and writing about them here, because I think you deserve to know about them. Also, because really excellent fantasy magazines are a vanishing breed, and they deserve your support. Issue #44 is cover-dated January/February, which means it’s still on sale here in the US. The fiction contents are:

“Going Back to the World” by Simon Avery
“The Absent Shade” by Priya Sharma
“The Fishers of Men” by Jackson Kuhl
“Sweet Water” by E. Catherine Tobler
“Samhain” by Tyler Keevil

Yes, that’s our own Jackson Kuhl in the TOC. Jackson’s last article for us was his review of Jeffrey E. Barlough’s The Cobbler of Ridingham, which appeared here last week. On his blog, Jackson talks a little about selling his story, “The Fishers of Men,” to a British market like Black Static:

I was a little shocked when [Black Static editor] Andy Cox accepted “Fishers;” it is a very American story and when I sent it I wasn’t sure the historical background would translate. But I suppose I don’t have to know the intricacies of lines of royal succession or the industrialization of Greater Manchester to enjoy M.R. James, Robert Aickman, or Susanna Clarke (to name the three most recent authors I’ve read), so perhaps the width of the Atlantic isn’t as great as I sometimes imagine.

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Future Treasures: The Testament of Tall Eagle by John R. Fultz

Future Treasures: The Testament of Tall Eagle by John R. Fultz

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The Testament of Tall Eagle-smallJohn R. Fultz’s first story for Black Gate was “Oblivion is the Sweetest Wine” (BG 12), a full-throttle sword-and-sorcery adventure of spider-haunted towers and a fearless thief who comes face-to-face with a terrifying secret. We published three more tales in his popular Zang Cycle: “Return of the Quill” (BG 13), “The Vintages of Dream” (BG 15), and “When the Glimmer Faire Came to the City of the Lonely Eye.”

John is much more well known these days for his breakout Books of the Shaper trilogy. Explorations called the first volume “flawless – and timeless – epic fantasy. For fans of epic fantasy, Seven Princes is as good as it gets.” For his fourth novel, John moves in a totally new direction, with a tribal fantasy set in a beautiful and savage land.

A young warrior’s vision-quest unveils an alien city full of magic and mystery. As a tribal rift threatens to destroy Tall Eagle’s people, night-crawling devils stalk and devour them, so he seeks the wisdom of the high-flying Myktu. These fantastic beings offer him hope, a chance for rebirth and prosperity, as two separate realities converge. Yet first Tall Eagle must find White Fawn – the girl he was born to love – and steal her back from the camp of his savage enemies. His best friend has become his deadliest rival, and now he must outwit an invading army of conquerors to lead his people into the Land Beyond the Sun.

The Testament of Tall Eagle is the epic saga of The People, as told in the words of their greatest hero.

John’s short fiction has appeared in Shattered Shields, Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume One, The Way of the Wizard, and other fine places. His recent articles for Black Gate include a look at Darrell Schweitzer’s upcoming Cthulhu Mythos anthology That Is Not Dead, an interview with GnomeSaga author Kenny Soward, and a peek behind the scenes at his first collection, The Revelations of Zang.

The Testament of Tall Eagle will be released by Ragnarok Publications this June. The cover is by Alex Raspad.

New Treasures: Shadow Study by Maria V. Snyder

New Treasures: Shadow Study by Maria V. Snyder

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Shadow Study Jacket-small

Maria V. Snyder’s first short story, “The Wizard’s Daily Horoscope,” appeared in Black Gate 11 in 2007. We published ”Cursing the Weather” in Black Gate 15, and it quickly became one of the most acclaimed stories in what was to be the final issue of the magazine. Here’s what Keith West said about it on his blog Adventures Fantastic:

Nysa… is probably as far from the sterotypical warrior woman as you can get. She’s a young girl working in a tavern, trying to earn enough money to buy the medicine needed to keep her dying mother alive. Then a weather wizard moves in across the street…  I wouldn’t have considered this one to really fit the theme of warrior woman. In spite of that, I think I enjoyed it the most. I’m going to be checking out more of Ms. Snyder’s work.

Keith wasn’t the only one to seek out Maria’s work. Her first novel, Poison Study, won the Compton Crook Award in 2006, and the third in the series, Fire Study, hit The New York Times bestseller list in 2008.

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