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Category: Editor’s Blog

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

Is Weird Tales Dead… Again?

Is Weird Tales Dead… Again?

Weird Tales 362-smallWeird Tales magazine, the oldest and most storied fantasy magazine in America, has died and returned numerous times in its near century-long history. And I’m beginning to wonder if it’s dead again.

Marvin Kaye took the editorial reins from Ann VanderMeer five years ago with much fanfare, but since then has produced only three issues — the last of which was two years ago. The magazine’s website has not been updated in well over two years. And worst of all, I’m now hearing reports from authors who sold work to the magazine that they’ve had stories returned with little or no explanation.

In fact, the lead story about Weird Tales these days is the complete lack of communication coming out of the editorial offices. At the Nebula Awards conference here in Chicago, which began yesterday, all mentions of the magazine have been accompanied by a shroud of gloom. And earlier today I received this from Black Gate author Joe Bonadonna, who sold a story to them several years ago:

Weird Tales is supposed to print one of my novellas on the online version of their Sword & Sorcery Special Edition — it’s too long for their print version. But it’s been 3.5 years since I heard from them, so who knows when that issue will be out? They are not very good at answering emails, and their website is terrible — no news on that either.

When a magazine essentially stops publishing, that’s bad news. When it fails to update its website for years, that worse. But when it goes dark for three years or more, it’s usually dead. So far, that yardstick has proven pretty reliable.

Weird Tales has been deader than this, and surged out of the grave before. I hope it does so again. But I’m beginning to doubt it.

Please Welcome Lady Business to the Hugo Ballot!

Please Welcome Lady Business to the Hugo Ballot!

Lady Business logo

The revised Hugo Awards Ballot for 2016 has been announced by MidAmericon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, following the withdrawal of two nominees: Thomas A. Mays, who declined in the Short Story category, and Black Gate, who declined our nomination last week. Two nominees were added: “Cat Pictures Please,” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld, January 2015) and the group blog Lady Business. I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve never heard of Lady Business, so I checked them out this week — and was impressed. In announcing their placement on the ballot, they were gracious enough to acknowledge us:

First and foremost, we would like to acknowledge Black Gate, a fine blog that has been an integral part of the SF/F fandom community for many years. Withdrawing from consideration cannot have been an easy decision for them, and we wish them all the best.

They also summarized their mandate:

For those not familiar with Lady Business, we are a group of women and genderqueer people who write about media from an intersectional feminist perspective. You can learn more about our individual editors here.

They have a handy sample list of 2015 posts, and it’s got some great stuff — including Nerd Adventures: Pacific Rim at After School Special by litomnivore, and an entertainingly cranky review of one of my favorite superhero shows, Agents of SHIELD 3×01, “Laws of Nature” – Don’t Try the Fish by renay. They also offer short fiction reviews, take look at Gender Discrimination in SFF Awards, and tackle the massive project of tracking eligibility for next year’s awards in the 2017 Hugo Spreadsheet of Doom.

I admit I was a bit apprehensive about what would take our place on the ballot, and it’s great to put those fears to rest. In my opinion, replacing Black Gate with Lady Business has upgraded the ballot nicely. As a side bonus, I’ve discovered a fine new site…. and isn’t that what awards are supposed to be about? Drop by Lady Business and check them out for yourselves.

The 2016 Locus Award Finalists

The 2016 Locus Award Finalists

Karen Memory-smallerWith all the hubbub surrounding the Hugo Awards this week, I almost overlooked the 2016 Locus Award Finalists, announced on Tuesday. There’s plenty of terrific reading on this list, and the nomination process is done with an open online poll.

The Locus Science Fiction Foundation sponsors the awards, and the winners are selected by the readers of Locus magazine. The awards began in 1971, originally as a way to highlight quality work in advance of the Hugo Awards. The winners will be announced during the Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle WA, June 24-26, 2016. In addition to creators, the Locus Foundation also honors winning publishers with certificates, which I think is kind of neat.

The finalists are:

FANTASY NOVEL

Karen Memory, Elizabeth Bear (Tor)
The House of Shattered Wings, Aliette de Bodard (Roc)
Wylding Hall, Elizabeth Hand (Open Road)
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

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The Hugo Nominations, 2016; or, Sigh …

The Hugo Nominations, 2016; or, Sigh …

2007 Hugo Award-smallI wasn’t sure I should bother writing this this year, as I’m not sure I have anything new or interesting to say that hasn’t been said, but I feel like getting some thoughts off my chest. This isn’t, I should add, my detailed analysis with voting thoughts … that will come later, after I’ve read the stories.

As most of you know by now, the Hugo Nominations for 2016 were dominated to an even greater degree than last year by the Rabid Puppies slate, organized by Theodore Beale (“Vox Day”). The Sad Puppies also put forth a recommendation list (“Not a Slate™”), and indeed they seem to have done so in good faith – openly gathered a set of recommendations from readers, and using that set put together a list of the most-recommended items in each category, a list longer than the nomination ballot. I don’t see anything whatsoever wrong with this. That said, their direct influence on the final ballot seems to have been minimal – which is, or should be, just fine: so was Locus’ influence, so was mine, etc.

The Rapid Puppies slate took over 75% of the ballot, and apparently the percentage would have been higher except that some nominees withdrew. There are very interesting analyses at Greg Hullender’s Rocket Stack Rank and Brandon Kempner’s Chaos Horizons. Using slightly different statistical models, they came up with estimates of 200 or so to 300 or more Rabid voters. (Vox Day claimed 750 adherents.) It seems likely that the Rabid nominators were much more disciplined in sticking to slate voting this year.

A cursory glance at the fiction entries on the ballot shows that there are some worthwhile, Rabid-supported, entries on it. In Best Novel, for instance, the two Rabid choice, Neal Stephenson’s Seveneves and Jim Butcher’s The Cinder Spires: The Aeronaut’s Windlass seem pretty reasonable. Likewise in Best Novella, all four of the Rabid entries are at least decent.

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SF Signal Goes Dark

SF Signal Goes Dark

SF Signal logoWhen I declined our 2016 Hugo Award nomination last week, I wrote:

A great many publications I deeply respect were completely swept aside by the Rabid Puppy ballot, including John DeNardo’s SF Signal… By giving up our very slim chance at winning, we can give another deserving publication a shot. That seems like a fair exchange to me.

SF Signal has been one of my favorite sites for years. So you can imagine my distress when I read John DeNardo’s last post yesterday, announcing the long-running site was shutting down.

When we started SF Signal in 2003, it was because we loved speculative fiction. Having a blog allowed us to share that love with other fans. We never dreamed it would have grown like it has… It’s been quite a ride.

But all good things come to an end.

It was a very hard decision to make, but we have decided to close down SF Signal. The reason is boringly simple: time. As the blog has grown, so has its demands for our attention. That is time we would rather spend with our families. We considered scaling back posts, but it felt like SF Signal would only be a shadow of its former self. So yes, it feels sudden, but a “cold turkey” exit seems like the right thing to do.

The site has been a fabulous resource for SF and fantasy fans for 13 years, and will be very much missed. John and his staff are looking for a good place to archive the site after the first week of June. If you have any suggestion, let them know.

Black Gate Declines Hugo Nomination

Black Gate Declines Hugo Nomination

2011 Hugo Award-smallEarly last week, Black Gate was nominated for a Hugo Award in the category of Best Fanzine. On Friday, we contacted the Awards Committee at MidAmeriCon II, the World Science Fiction Convention, to inform them that we have declined the nomination.

Why did we decline? While we won’t know the exact number of nominating ballots until the stats are released (after the Hugos are awarded), it’s clear that Black Gate largely benefited from Vox Day’s Rabid Puppy Hugo slate. As we reported Wednesday, roughly 80% of this year’s Hugo ballot was dictated by that slate — it swept six categories, including Short Story, Graphic Story, and Fanzine. Our choice to withdraw was informed by many of the same factors that led us to make the same decision last year.

It also seems fairly obvious that we cannot win. Of the 61 nominees the Puppy ballots placed on the Hugo ballot last year, only one, Guardians of the Galaxy, received an award. The Rabid Puppy brand, which BG is now unwillingly associated with, is so toxic that it’s virtually impossible to overcome that association without the equivalent of a $100 million advertising campaign. Those nominees who stubbornly argued otherwise last year, and attended the Hugo ceremony with high hopes, learned that the hard way, unceremoniously losing out to No Award in a painful rout across virtually every category. (Incidentally, I also voted No Award for most of the ballot.)

Several folks I admire, including George R.R. Martin and John Scalzi, are urging nominees not to withdraw, and for excellent reasons. However, the reason that’s paramount to me, my desire to step aside in favor of a worthy publication not on the slate, outweighs those considerations. A great many publications I deeply respect were completely swept aside by the Rabid Puppy ballot, including John DeNardo’s SF Signal, Rich Horton’s Strange at Ecbatan, Coming Attractions, and even last year’s winner — Journey Planet. By giving up our very slim chance at winning, we can give another deserving publication a shot. That seems like a fair exchange to me.

Good luck to all the nominees — I mean that. As usual, we’ll be covering the Awards, and the events leading up to them, here on the blog.

Black Gate Nominated For a Hugo Award

Black Gate Nominated For a Hugo Award

Hugo Award skinny-smallBlack Gate has been nominated for a Hugo Award, in the category of Best Fanzine.

This is the second year in a row that Black Gate has been nominated. We declined our nomination in 2015, since it was largely a result of the notorious Rabid Puppy slate created by Vox Day.

As expected (since a paid membership for Worldcon, required to vote for the 2015 Hugos, also allows you to nominate in 2016), the Rabid Puppies also had a disproportionate impact on the nominations this year. Vox Day published his slate of recommendations in March (again including Black Gate for Best Fanzine) and, as he noted on his blog earlier today, once again his recommendations thoroughly dominated the final ballot.

Well done, all of you Rabids. Very well done. According to Mike Glyer, the Rabid Puppies placed 64 of its 81 recommendations on the final ballot… You understand, as the other side does not, that there is no end to cultural war. They still think we can be intimidated, or shamed, or guilted somehow, because those are the tactics that have worked for their kind for decades, if not generations.

But we are immune to such things. Let them scoff, let them minimize, let them posture, let them cry, it makes absolutely no difference what they do or what they say. There is nothing that they can do except vote No Award and change the rules….

Are you not entertained?

The winners will be announced at MidAmericon II, the 74th World Science Fiction Convention, to be held in Kansas City MO, on August 17-21, 2016.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in March

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in March

The palace of Fasiladas-smallThe number one post at the Black Gate blog last month was Sean McLachlan’s report on the historically fascinating castles of Gondar, Ethiopia. Sean’s adventures in Ethiopia certainly captured the attention of our readers — he also had the #3 post, with his photo-essay on the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela.

Coming in at #2 was the fifth chapter in William I. Lengeman III’s ongoing Star Trek re-watch, on Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. I’ve been re-watching the early Star Trek films myself the past few months, and been enjoying this series very much.

Rounding out the Top Five are our Vintage Treasures report on The Silistra Quartet — by one of the most popular writers among Black Gate’s readership, Janet Morris — and our look at Gardner’s Dozois recent controversial comments on the New Sword and Sorcery.

Classic writers captured the next three slots, including Bob Byrne’s report on the new Conan RPG, Rich Horton on Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Thomas Parker’s look at one of the most hotly debated writers of pulp SF: “Classically Awful or Awfully Classic: A.E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A.”

Howard Andrew Jones had the #9 slot with his review of the Second Edition of Victory Point Games’ popular Empires in America, and Drake author Peter McLean closed out the Top Ten with his thoughtful article on “Why We Shouldn’t Hunt The Trope To Extinction.”

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Check Out the Teaser Trailer for Marvel’s Doctor Strange

Check Out the Teaser Trailer for Marvel’s Doctor Strange

I’m very excited by Marvel’s upcoming Doctor Strange movie, even more than I usually am by big-budget comic adaptations. And the brand new teaser trailer — featuring our first look at Benedict Cumberbatch as Stephen Strange, Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One, and Chiwetel Ejiofor as the sinister Baron Mordo — isn’t helping me stay calm at all.

I view Doctor Strange at the last major untapped Marvel property. The 1960s comic, by Stan Lee and the brilliant Steve Ditko, the team that created Spider-Man, created in Doctor Strange a truly unique comic character, a sorcerer-hero who learned to navigate the strange paths between our reality and the next, and in the process discovered an endless chain of bizarrely-connected — and frequently very dangerous — parallel dimensions. I had real fears the movie would gloss over that aspect of his origin story, or ignore it entirely, but this trailer has put those to rest. It’s going to be epic.

Doctor Strange is scheduled for release November 4. It also stars Rachel McAdams and Mads Mikkelsen, and is directed by Scott Derrickson (The Messengers, Sinister). See our previous coverage here and here. Derek Kunsken took a detailed look at Lee and Ditko’s original comic here and here.

Gardner Dozois on the New Sword & Sorcery

Gardner Dozois on the New Sword & Sorcery

Spaghetti western town-smallOn Facebook yesterday editor Gardner Dozois theorized that the essential influence on modern Sword & Sorcery, which differentiates it from the classic pulp S&S of Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber, may be the Spaghetti Western.

While we’re talking about fantasy, I’ve been reading a lot of what’s being called “the New Sword & Sorcery” lately, stuff by people like Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, K.J. Parker, Daniel Abraham, and it struck me what the one essential influence was that aesthetically separates the New Sword & Sorcery from the Old Sword & Sorcery, since both have sword-wielding adventurers, monsters, and evil magicians: it’s the Spaghetti Western. Clearly Spaghetti Westerns have had a big influence on the TONE of this new work. Gone are the gorgeous, jewel-encrusted temples stuffed with huge snakes and giant idols with jeweled eyes and slinky sinister priestesses in jeweled bikinis where Conan used to hang out. Instead, the most common setting seems to be a remote jerkwater village, either parched and sun-blasted or drizzling and half-buried in mud, extremely poor and mean, swarming with flies, packed with venal, dull-eyed, illiterate peasants who are barely smarter than morons, if they are, and who have no power or influence in the wider world, and certainly no money, and who stare blankly and slack-jawed at our heroes as they enter town, either kicking up clouds of dust at every step or splashing muddy water.

You know this place. Think of every degraded village in every Spaghetti Western you’ve ever seen.

Read his comment (and the fascinating discussion thread with folks like Eleanor Arnason, Joe Bonadonna, Scott Oden, Elizabeth Lynn, Christopher Fowler, Darrell Schweitzer, Lisa Tuttle, and others) here.