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Category: Editor’s Blog

The blog posts of Black Gate Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones and Editor John O’Neill

The Wonders of Fairwood Press

The Wonders of Fairwood Press

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I first met Patrick Swenson, publisher and editorial mastermind at Fairwood Press, back in the late 90s. I think it might have been James Van Pelt who introduced us, after I wrote a review of Patrick’s magazine, TaleBones. I helped Patrick negotiate with a squatter who was sitting on the address he wanted for his website (unsuccessfully, as I recall.) At the time, Fairwood Press was a small press underdog, with only a handful of titles to its name, but a fast-growing reputation.

Fastforward about 17 years, to Worldcon in 2016. I was walking through the sprawling dealer’s room when I spotted Patrick sitting behind a table groaning under the weight of dozens and dozens of eye-catching science fiction and fantasy books, from some of the biggest names in the industry — including Robert Silverberg, Michael Bishop, Jay Lake, Carrie Vaughn, Devon Monk, Tom Piccirilli, Tina Connolly, James Van Pelt, and many others. Could this possibly be the same Fairwood Press?

Yes, as it turned out.

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in August

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george-rr-martin-awards-and-alfie-award-to-john-oneill-of-black-gate-smallFollowing on our record 1.26 million page views in July, Black Gate had an even more incredible August. There were lots of small triumphs, but the big one was receiving an Alfie Award from George R.R. Martin at Worldcon (at right). In his blog post explaining this year’s awards, George wrote:

One of my special ‘committee awards’ went to Black Gate, which had 461 nominations in the Fanzine category, second among all nominees and good for a place on the ballot. But Black Gate turned down the nomination, just as they did last year, to disassociate themselves from the slates. Turning down one Hugo nomination is hard, turning down two must be agony. Integrity like that deserves recognition, as does Black Gate itself. Editor John O’Neill was on hand to accept the Alfie.

Our top article last month was my report on the Alfie Awards, with pics from the associated Hugo Losers party. Second was M Harold Page’s study on how to capture the magic of a great dungeon crawl in fiction. And third was our look at Michael McDowell’s classic horror novel Cold Moon Over Babylon.

Rounding out the Top Five were William Patrick Maynard’s review of The Midnight Guardian (“a hardboiled pulp yarn that is so good, it immediately makes you set the author to one side with a handful of other standouts”), and Neil Baker’s gaming piece, “How No Man’s Sky Has Reinvigorated a Gaming Generation (No, Not That One).”

Also in the Top Ten were our report on the 2016 Hugo Award Winners, Parts One and Two of Fletcher Vredenburgh’s Summer Short Story Roundup, our summary of the Top 50 Black Gate Posts in July, and Bob Byrne’s detailed history of the TSR classic Dungeon!

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The 2016 British Fantasy Awards Winners

The 2016 British Fantasy Awards Winners

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rawblood-catriona-ward-smallThe winners of the 2016 British Fantasy Awards have been announced by the British Fantasy Society. Tea and crumpets for everyone!

Since we forgot to report on the nominees three months ago, we’ll make up for it here by listing both the winners and the nominees in each category. Ready? Here we go.

Best Fantasy Novel — The Robert Holdstock Award

Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Macmillan)

Half a War, Joe Abercrombie (Harper Voyager)
Sorcerer to the Crown, Zen Cho (Macmillan)
Signal to Noise, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Solaris)
Guns of the Dawn, Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor)
The Iron Ghost, Jen Williams (Headline)

Best Horror Novel — The August Derleth Award

Rawblood, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

Welcome to Night Vale, Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor (Orbit)
The Silence, Tim Lebbon (Titan)
A Cold Silence, Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher)
Lost Girl, Adam Nevill (Pan)
The Death House, Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)
Rawblood, Catriona Ward (Weidenfeld & Nicholson)

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The Mystery of New Dimensions 13

The Mystery of New Dimensions 13

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Robert Silverberg’s New Dimensions was one of the most celebrated anthology series of the 70s. It published an impressive amount of award-winning fiction, including R. A. Lafferty’s “Eurema’s Dam” (1973 Hugo), Ursula K. Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (1974 Hugo), James Tiptree, Jr’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” (1974 Hugo), Suzy McKee Charnas “Unicorn Tapestry” (1981 Nebula), and many others.

New Dimensions 11 and 12 were co-edited with Marta Randall. The final volume, New Dimensions 13, was solely edited by Randall, and it boasted a dazzling range of writers, including Vonda McIntyre, Robert Silverberg, R.A. Lafferty, Lucius Shepard Michael Swanwick, Barry N. Malzberg, and many others. There’s just one problem with it, however: no finished copies are known to have survived. The entire print run was reportedly pulped, and the only copies that exist today were advance copies sent out to reviewers.

Why? That’s part of the mystery. Gunter Swain posted the cover above on Facebook today — the first image I’ve ever seen of the book. He reports the book “was published but was never distributed.” In the comments section, Marta Randall shed some light on the mystery.

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The Print Version of the 7th Edition of Call of Cthulhu is Now Available

The Print Version of the 7th Edition of Call of Cthulhu is Now Available

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The Kickstarter for the long-awaited Seventh Edition of Call of Cthulhu, one of the greatest role playing games of all time, was one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in gaming history, pulling in over $560,000 on a $40,000 goal. The PDF versions were released back in 2014, but the promised print edition took a lot longer to arrive. But it is now here — officially announced on the website on August 26, and already offered for sale at various online outlets.

The 7th Edition, based on the original rules by Sandy Peterson and Lynn Willis, was significantly revised by Paul Fricker and Mike Mason. It weighs in at 448 pages in hardcover, with an eye-catching cover by Sam Lamont and some color interiors. A significant amount of supporting material is already available, including the Call of Cthulhu Keepers Screen, a hardcover Investigator Handbook, the S.Petersen’s Field Guide to Lovecraftian Horrors, and the first 7th Edition adventure collection, Nameless Horrors.

If you’re new to Call of Cthulhu, or just curious, great! CoC is one of the most innovative and creative role playing games ever made, and — almost uniquely in the industry — its supplements and adventures make great reading, even if you never have the chance to sit down at a table with fellow players. It was the first semi-contemporary RPG, and also the first to feature ordinary folks as protagonists. But don’t just take my word for it… here’s a dead-on quote from Ed Grabianowski’s io9 article, “Call Of Cthulhu Was The First Role-Playing Game To Drive People Insane.”

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io9 on All the New Scifi and Fantasy Books You Absolutely Must Read This Fall

io9 on All the New Scifi and Fantasy Books You Absolutely Must Read This Fall

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Fall officially begins on Thursday (here in the Northern Hemisphere, at least). Which means I can officially give up on the wreckage of my Summer Reading Plan, and start all over again with a brand new, crazy ambitious and supernaturally awesome Fall Reading Plan. Yeah!

I love the planning stages of my quarterly reading plans, ’cause they’re filled with crazy optimism. Shall we throw the 10-volume Malazan Book of the Fallen in there? Why the hell not! It’s only September!

It’s at this stage of the quarter that I find articles like Cheryl Eddy’s “All the New Scifi and Fantasy Books You Absolutely Must Read This Fall,” published at io9 at the end of August, so very helpful. Eddy lists over two dozen major books launching this fall, including A Night Without Stars by Peter F. Hamilton, Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and new books by Connie Willis, Cixin Liu, Christopher Pries, Ken Liu, Margaret Atwood, Mel Brooks, Mark Frost, Bruce Sterling, and many others. Here’s her take on A City Dreaming by Daniel Polansky.

An ageless magician fond of drinking beer and sleeping late visits New York City to visit old friends, only to find the city has changed in unexpected ways — and a supernatural war is brewing on its fringes.

See the complete article here.

It’s Not Too Late to Sample Theresa DeLucci’s 5 Horror Reads for Summer

It’s Not Too Late to Sample Theresa DeLucci’s 5 Horror Reads for Summer

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The last day of summer is September 22. Which means I have four days left to keep the promise to myself I made when I read Theresa DeLucci’s Tor.com article Bright Days, Dark Fiction: 5 Horror Reads for Summer, and read at least two of her tantalizing selections. Top of my list right now are Michael Wehunt’s Greener Pastures and I Am Providence by Nick Mamatas. But I’m also considering Daniel Braum’s debut collection The Night Marchers.

Braum has a knack for describing the indescribable in extraordinarily accessible language. No mean feat when one is relating stories of extra-dimensional creatures and ancient, pissed-off gods. The plight of the underrepresented features prominently in a number of stories, like the title story (conquered gods of Hawaii,) “The Ghost Dance” (Native American spirits,) and “The Green Man of Punta Cabre” (ancient gods of Guatemala.) The latter story in particular was full of pathos as a missionary struggles to understand the true gods of his flock, and the ugly exploitation they suffer at the hands of civil war and invading corporation’s greed… My favorites were the desert horror of “The Moon and the Mesa” and the final story, one original to this collection, “The Sphinx of Cropsey Avenue.” A melancholy surrealist piece about riddles, misfortune, and familial duty finds a man, his fortune-telling girlfriend, and her son all linked as a found family, inextricably connected to a larger universal mystery steeped in ambivalence.

Read Theresa’s complete article here.

The Life of a Reprint Anthologist: Paula Guran’s Research Stack for the Upcoming Swords Against Darkness

The Life of a Reprint Anthologist: Paula Guran’s Research Stack for the Upcoming Swords Against Darkness

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Paula Guran's sword and sorcery research

Paula Guran has my dream job. She’s currently deep into the research phase for her upcoming Swords Against Darkness (named, she says, partly in tribute to Andrew J. Offutt’s classic line of 70s Zebra anthologies). And last week she posted this pic of her current reading stack, saying:

Life of a Reprint Anthologist: This is not even HALF the research sources for Swords Against Darkness (a sword & sorcery anthology for next year).

Check out those gorgeous Black Gate magazines in the second stack!

I think Paula is the perfect editor to tackle this job. She has excellent taste, and she’s already proven — in numerous excellent recent anthologies such as Weird Detectives, New Cthulhu 2, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2016 — that she brings a fresh eye to fantasy.

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Joe Bonadonna Reports on Weird Tales

Joe Bonadonna Reports on Weird Tales

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Weird Tales 360 back cover-smallBack in May I wrote a brief post asking “Is Weird Tales Dead… Again?”

Since then there’s been no shortage of rumors, grumblings, and premature death announcements… but not a lot of facts. But this week, Black Gate roving reporter Joe Bonadonna checks in with the latest news.

In spite some talk concerning the possible demise of Weird Tales, I’m happy to report that it is still alive and well. I spoke with editor Marvin Kaye and he told me plans are in the works for the future. They had some financial issues, but all is well. The publisher plans to do an “unthemed” issue, followed by a “Halloween Edition” before all else.

I am hoping that the planned “Sword and Sorcery Special Edition” will follow after that. I was not given any specific timeline for the publication of these issues, but let’s hope they’ll all see the light of day within a short amount of time, without too much time-lag between issues. I keep checking Weird Tales websites for updates, but so far haven’t been able to learn anything. Let’s all hope for the best, and I’ll try to keep you all in the loop when and if I learn anything more.

As for new submissions, they are overstocked with fiction. No need to submit. That is all.

We’ll keep you posted as we learn more.

The 2016 Mythopoeic Award Winners

The 2016 Mythopoeic Award Winners

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Uprooted-Naomi-Novik-smallWith all my travels and such this month, I haven’t done a very good job keeping up with all the genre news. For example, I completely missed reporting on the 2016 Mythopoeic Awards, which were announced by the Mythopoeic Society at Mythcon 47 on August 7. Here they are!

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature

Castle Hangnail, Ursula Vernon (Dial)

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Inklings Studies

Charles Williams: The Third Inkling, Grevel Lindop (Oxford University Press)

Mythopoeic Scholarship Award in Myth and Fantasy Studies

The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, Jamie Williamson (Palgrave Macmillan)

That’s quite a capstone for Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, which so far this year has also won the Nebula Award for Best Novel, the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and is also a nominee for the World Fantasy Award. I was also pleased to see Jamie Williamson’s non-fiction book The Evolution of Modern Fantasy, one of the first books to seriously study Lin Carter’s Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, get some recognition as well.

Last year’s winner of the Mythopoeic Award was BG author Sarah Avery, whose Tales from Rugosa Coven won in the Adult Literartue category. Get all the details on this year’s nominees at Locus Online.