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Category: Editor’s Blog

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

Check Out the Teaser Trailer for Marvel’s Doctor Strange

Check Out the Teaser Trailer for Marvel’s Doctor Strange

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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

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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.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in February

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in February

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2011 Hugo Award-smallThe top article at Black Gate last month wasn’t even a BG piece, strictly speaking. It was a brief link to Matthew David Surridge’s essay The Great Hugo Wars of 2015, at Splice Today. Based on the overwhelming traffic to that article, and the high number of comments, it seems our readers are still more than casually interested in the Hugo Awards.

Number 2 on the list was M Harold Page’s look at Fool’s Assassin, and How Robin Hobb Writes Lyrical Fantasy Without Being Boring. As always, never underestimate the power of a great title. It was followed by our obituary for BG contributor and author Bud Webster.

Rounding out the Top Five were Matthew Wuertz’s piece on a 60-year old scandal, the Galaxy Science Fiction $6,500 Novel-Writing Sham, and Donald Crankshaw’s review of D. P. Prior’s second self-published fantasy novel Carnifex, the sequel to his popular debut The Nameless Dwarf.

Also in the Top Ten for February were Doug Ellis’ historical essay on the Great Pulp Gathering at Mort Weisinger’s House in 1937, Marie Bilodeau’s review of season one of The Flash, Fletcher Vredenburgh’s detailed look at Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Illearth War, our sneak peek at Salomé Jones’s new anthology Cthulhu Lies Dreaming, and Violette Malan’s look at Agent Carter.

The complete list of Top Articles for February follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles, online fiction, and blog categories for the month.

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A Tale of Two Covers: The Last Page by Anthony Huso

A Tale of Two Covers: The Last Page by Anthony Huso

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The Last Page Anthony Huso-small The Last Page Anthony Huso paperback-small

I bought the hardcover edition of Anthony Huso’s debut novel The Last Page after reading Matthew David Surridge’s review in Black Gate 12.

The Last Page is a high fantasy steampunk novel, and a love story. We follow the sexually charged relationship between the improbably named Caliph Howl, heir to the throne of the northern country of Stonehold, and a witch named Sena. The two of them meet at university, go their own ways, and then come together again after Caliph has become king and Sena has acquired a vastly powerful magical tome…  what really makes the first book work is its language. The prose is strong, quick and dense in the best ways. The diction, the word choice, is inventive; the imagery is both original and concise. At its best, Huso’s language recalls Wolfe or Vance…

The last time I was in a bookstore I did a double take when I saw the trade paperback edition, which has been given a dramatically different cover. The hardcover edition (above left) was packaged as an urban fantasy, with a beautiful woman with glowing eyes on the cover. The paperback (at right) has been completely redesigned as a fantasy adventure novel, showing a huge fleet of airships massing over a sprawling fantasy landscape. If you’re not paying attention, it’d be pretty easy to mistake it for a completely different book.

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Take a Classic Science Fiction Tour With IF Magazine

Take a Classic Science Fiction Tour With IF Magazine

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If Worlds of Science Fiction 50s lot-small

The entire run of IF Magazine, one of the great 20th Century science fiction magazines, is now freely available online at the Internet Archive.

IF, originally titled If Worlds of Science Fiction and later Worlds of If, was a monthly magazine that began publishing in 1952. It was published continuously for 22 years, until it was merged with Galaxy in 1974. During its run it published some of the most acclaimed SF of the 20th Century, including “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison, Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Larry Niven’s “Neutron Star,” James Blish’s A Case of Conscience, Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness, Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold, Jack Williamson and Fredrick Pohl’s The Reefs of Space, and much, much more.

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Congratulations to Black Gate‘s Nominees for the REH Foundation Awards

Congratulations to Black Gate‘s Nominees for the REH Foundation Awards

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The Robert E. Howard Foundation

On Wednesday the Robert E. Howard Foundation announced the nominees for this year’s REH Foundation Awards, honoring the top contributions in Howard scholarship and in the promotion of Howard’s life and works. We were delighted and honored to see Black Gate bloggers nominated in several major categories, 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

Only REH Foundation members can vote for the nominees. If you’re interested in learning more about the foundation (and voting), you can sign up for a free memberships at the REHF website here.

Thanks to the REH Foundation for the many honors. And congratulations to all the nominees!

Collecting James White

Collecting James White

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Collecting James White-small

I’ve been enjoying doing a little research on vintage paperback prices… mostly because it involves my favorite pastime, shopping online for science fiction paperbacks. Except now I get to do it, y’know, in the name of science.

What I’ve learned so far hasn’t been super surprising. Robert A. Heinlein is popular. Philip K. Dick is really popular. I guess the biggest surprise is that the #2 man on the list is Karl Edward Wagner, which I didn’t expect (but I probably should have). Here’s a snapshot of what you can expect to pay as you diligently build your SF library, based on a sample of top-condition paperback auctions over the last 2-3 months.

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Future Treasures: Guile by Constance Cooper

Future Treasures: Guile by Constance Cooper

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Guile Constance Cooper-small Guile Constance Cooper back-small
Art for "The Wily Thing" by Michael Vilardi (BG 12)
Art for “The Wily Thing” by Michael Vilardi (BG 12)

I frequently get excited by upcoming fantasy novels. But I rarely get as excited as I am by Guile, the debut fantasy novel from Constance Cooper, to be released next month by Clarion Books. Here’s Constance, from her blog:

Guile started with a short story called “The Wily Thing” which was published in Black Gate magazine in 2008. It was well received…

It was indeed. Here’s Lois Tilton at The Internet Review of Science Fiction:

Yonie and her cat LaRue make a meager living as Seers in one of the cheaper districts of Wicked Ford. Actually LaRue is the Seer, having been nearly drowned as a kitten. It is prolonged contact with the waters that make an object or a person guileful. Now a fisherman has brought Yonie an object, a ship’s gong taken from a wrecked vessel, that has some very dangerous wiles, but the fisherman has disappeared before she can warn him about it — and be paid.

An absolute delight. The setting is fascinating and original, every detail crafted in prose with real charm… RECOMMENDED.

“The Wily Thing” originally appeared in Black Gate 12, and it’s one of my favorite stories from that era of the magazine. The novel tells a brand new tale of Yonie and her magically gifted cat LaRue, set in the treacherous waters of Wicked Ford.

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SFWA Announces the 2016 Nebula Award Nominations

SFWA Announces the 2016 Nebula Award Nominations

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The Fifth Season Jemisin-smallThe Nebula Award is one of the most prestigious awards our industry has to offer, and last year’s awards were a pretty big deal for me. I was asked to present the award for Best Novelette of the Year at the Nebula Awards weekend in downtown Chicago, an honor which I won’t soon forget.

The Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) has announced the nominees for the 2016 Nebula Awards, and this year’s nominations are a pretty big deal for me as as well, but for different reasons. Several Black Gate bloggers and authors — including Amal El-Mohtar, Lawrence M. Schoen, and our website editor C.S.E. Cooney — have captured nominations, and that’s even more thrilling.

This year’s nominees are (links will take you to our previous coverage):

Novel

Raising Caine, Charles E. Gannon (Baen)
The Fifth Season, N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Orbit)
The Grace of Kings, Ken Liu (Saga)
Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)
Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, Lawrence M. Schoen (Tor)
Updraft, Fran Wilde (Tor)

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in January

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in January

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Photo by Andrew Porter
David G. Hartwell; Photo by Andrew Porter

The most widely read article at Black Gate last month was Andy Duncan’s obituary for Tor senior editor David G. Hartwell, the founder of the World Fantasy Convention and one of the most accomplished editors this field has ever seen.

In the last few weeks we’ve compiled several articles on David’s most popular books, including:

The Masterpieces of Fantasy
The Dark Descent and The World Treasury of Science Fiction
The Early Horror Paperbacks
Foundations of Fear and The Ascent of Wonder

Coming in a close second was M. Harold Page’s look back at some of the best classic adventure fantasy, “Some Vintage Genre Fiction Still Worth Reading (and Why),” followed by our terrifying giant bug report, “I Don’t Mean to Alarm Anyone, But We’ve Discovered Giant Insects on Monster Island.”

Rounding out the Top Five were M. Harold Page’s Vintage Treasures report on The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour, and Fletcher Vredenburgh’s “Guides to Worlds Fantastic and Strange.”

The Top 10 articles for January also included Peter McLean’s look at writing modern noir fantasy, E.E. Knight’s review of the PC Game Endless Legend (which my son Drew can’t seem to stop playing), M. Harold Page’s examination of the writing lessons contained in Louis L’Amour’s The Walking Drum, Bob Byrne’s look at the R-Rated Nero Wolfe, and the first installment of our Hartwell tribute, a look at the Masterpieces of Fantasy volumes.

The complete list of Top Articles for January follows. Below that, I’ve also broken out the most popular overall articles, online fiction, and blog categories for the month.

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