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

Dear Puppy Nominees: Grow Up

Dear Puppy Nominees: Grow Up

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Starship Sofa Hugo-smallAs I predicted in my last post, there’s been no shortage of discussion regarding the Hugo Award ceremony Saturday night. From the non-Puppy contingent there’s been plenty of smug satisfaction and schadenfreude, and from from the Puppies there’s been the expected complaining about intolerance from the evil left, and dark threats about next year.

Sadly, I haven’t seen a lot of calls to come together now that the fireworks are (largely) over. Perhaps the most insightful comment I read (and I read a lot) came from author James Enge, who wrote:

Let me say this about the puppies — rabid, sad, or otherwise: they were right to act, to participate in something that mattered to them. Fandom was caught napping on the nominations, but not on the final voting. We should rise to the puppies’ challenge (and example) and participate in the nominations for next year’s ‪Hugos‬.

If you take the time to read though the various posts and comments from both sides (and I admit I stayed up very late Saturday night and Sunday morning, doing exactly that), you’ll find pretty much what you expect. Both sides talking past each other. A lot of hurt feelings, and a sense (probably accurate) that the other side isn’t listening. No wonder both sides are talking exclusively to their own small audience — they’re the only ones listening.

Only the most hardened Puppy kickers refuse to acknowledge that the Puppies have a point about the fiction they love being shoved aside for major awards. And for the most part, the puppies have (grudgingly) admitted that they could have fielded a better slate. I suppose that’s understanding, of a sort. So there’s that. Most of the grumpy talk in the past 48 hours hasn’t really bothered me.

With one exception. There’s one class of complaints that drives me absolutely batty, because it seems to me to arise from willful ignorance, an overabundance of pride, or raw, simple stupidity. And that’s the anguished cry from some Puppy nominees who didn’t win, and who put the blame squarely on the entire industry.

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Dear Puppies: Your Taste Sucks

Dear Puppies: Your Taste Sucks

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Hugo Award Black GateThe winners of the 2015 Hugo Awards were announced Saturday evening at Sasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention in Spokane, Washington. As we’ve discussed here several times, the Hugo ballot was largely hijacked by the Rabid Puppies slate (and to a much lesser extent, by the Sad Puppies slate), which dictated roughly 70% of the final ballot.

The results are now in, and they mark a stinging repudiation of both the Rabid Puppies and Sad Puppies. Not a single Puppy-nominated work of fiction or non-fiction won, and the majority of Puppy-nominated works placed below “No Award.” In both of the short fiction categories in which the Puppies locked out all other nominees, the Hugo went to “No Award.” The complete list of winners follows.

Best Novel – The Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu (Tor Books)
Best Novella – No Award
Best Novelette – “The Day the World Turned Upside Down” by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Lightspeed, April 2014)
Best Short Story – No Award
Best Related Work – No Award
Best Graphic Story – Ms. Marvel Volume 1: No Normal (Marvel Comics)
Best Dramatic Presentation (Long Form) – Guardians of the Galaxy
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) – Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”

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The mid-August Fantasy Magazine Rack

The mid-August Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Beneath-Ceaseles-Skies-178-rack Beneath-Ceaseless-Skies-179-rack The-Dark-Issue-9-rack Swords-and-Sorcery-Magazine-July-2015-rack
Outposts-of-Beyond-July-2015-rack Science Fiction Classics 10-rack The-Digest-Enthusiast-2-rack The-Night-of-the-Salamander-rack

We’ve added no less than three magazines to our coverage in August, and a fine mix of new titles it is: Tyree Campbell’s space opera/magic opera Outposts of Beyond, pulp reprint zine Science Fiction Classics, and the splendid Digest Enthusiast, devoted to vintage and contemporary genre digest magazines. That brings the number of magazines we cover regularly up to 30, which should be more than enough to keep you busy.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our early August Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

As we’ve mentioned before, all of these magazines are completely dependent on fans and readers to keep them alive. Many are marginal operations for whom a handful of subscriptions may mean the difference between life and death. Why not check one or two out, and try a sample issue? There are magazines here for every budget, from completely free to $12.95/issue. If you find something intriguing, I hope you’ll consider taking a chance on a subscription. I think you’ll find it’s money very well spent.

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538 Blog Reports Crowdfunding Is Driving A $196 Million Board Game Renaissance

538 Blog Reports Crowdfunding Is Driving A $196 Million Board Game Renaissance

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Exploding Kittens-smallNate Silver’s popular 538 blog, known mostly for astute political analysis, often takes a hard look at other industries, and yesterday Oliver Roeder examined the recent explosive growth in crowdfunding for board games. His examples include Conan (which we covered here,) Reaper Miniatures, Dwarven Forge, and the break-out hit Exploding Kittens, which exceeded its campaign goal in eight minutes and set a record for most backers in Kickstarter history, raising $8,782,571 from 219,382 backers.

Luke Crane is Kickstarter’s in-house board game expert and resident dungeon master. He sees Kickstarter as the latest in a series of board and card gaming milestones. Dungeons & Dragons, first published in 1974, crystallized role-play gaming. Magic: The Gathering, which debuted in 1993 and became a smash hit, spawned countless expansions and still boasts a competitive professional circuit. The Settlers of Catan, and its first English-language edition in 1996, gave many their first taste of German board gaming kultur. That game has sold over 15 million copies.

And then, in mid-2009, Kickstarter launched.

Since that debut, pledges to board and card game projects on the site have totaled $196 million, according to the company. Ninety-three percent of that money went to successful projects — those that reached their fundraising goal. For comparison, pledges to video game projects, including hardware and mobile games, have totaled $179 million. Of that, 85 percent went to ultimately successful projects. On Kickstarter, analog is beating digital.

Read the complete article here.

Conquer a Dark and Dangerous Galaxy in Warhammer 40K: Forbidden Stars

Conquer a Dark and Dangerous Galaxy in Warhammer 40K: Forbidden Stars

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Forbidden Stars-small Last year I bought Warhammer 40,000: Conquest, Fantasy Flight’s two-player card game of interplanetary warfare in the Warhammer 40K universe, and enjoyed it quite a bit. But as much fun as it was, it wasn’t what I really wanted — a multi-player game of large scale strategic conflict in the stars.

So I was excited to discover today that Fantasy Flight has recently released Forbidden Stars, a competitive board game of interplanetary war set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe, and it looks to be exactly what I was hoping for. The base set features four iconic 40K factions: the loyalit Ultramarines Space Marines, Craft world Iyanden Elder, Evil Sunz Orks, and World Eaters Chaos Space Marines. Each faction has its own range of units and unique combat, event, and upgrade cards.

While I miss some of the other colorful factions in the 40K universe — such as Tyranids, Dark Eldar, and Tau — doubtless they will be included in later expansions.

The game uses the familiar moveable tile system, to give every conflict a unique scope and landscape (see the pic of the board below). The huge box comes packed with over 140 sculpted plastic pieces — always one of the delights of a Fantasy Flight game — and custom dice.

There was some concern in certain quarters that, following their acquisition by Asmodee last November, Fantasy Flight would lose some of its creative spark. That certainly doesn’t seem to be the case.

Fantasy Flight first dabbled with the Warhammer 40K license with a line of excellent role playing games, including Dark Heresy, Only War, and the superb Rogue Trader, one of the best space RPGs I’ve ever played. They have stopped producing supplements for the RPGs (and cleared out much of their back stock with a huge sale late last year), and have now turned their energies to board games. This is the third Warhammer 40K board game to be released by Fantasy Flight (the first two were Relic and Conquest), and this one seems by far the most ambitious.

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New Statesmen on the “Shockingly Offensive” 100 Best Fantasy and SF Novels

New Statesmen on the “Shockingly Offensive” 100 Best Fantasy and SF Novels

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A Spell for Chameleon-smallLiz Lutgendorff at New Statesmen read all 100 books on NPR’s list of the best science fiction and fantasy novels — a list that includes virtually every major title the genre has yet produced. And her response mirrors a complaint I hear over and over from young fantasy readers, and especially women — the classics of our genre have very little to offer readers seeking interesting and strong women characters.

There were also books that were outright misogynistic, like a A Spell for Chameleon where characters openly talk about not trusting women… The main plot of A Spell for Chameleon is that the main character, stupidly named Bink, has no magical talent…. Along the way, he meets Chameleon, who has the unenviable magic of being smart but ugly in one phase of the moon and beautiful but stupid in another. This inevitably leads to Bink liking her… Apparently for Bink, having someone compliant was more valuable than intelligence or independence, making Bink an utter creep…

Frankly, from my vantage in 2015, it was just plain weird to read books where there were hardly any women, no people of colour, no LGBT people. It seemed wholly unbelievable. I know what you could say: it’s science fiction and fantasy, believability isn’t one of the main criteria for such books. But it is relatively absurd that in the future people could discover faster-than-light travel, build massive empires and create artificial intelligences but somehow not crack gender equality or the space-faring glass ceiling.

The consequence of the lack of women and the obvious sexism is that the books became very much like one another. My book reviews contained more profanity and I became a much more harsh critic of the genres I most enjoyed reading. They were all the same story of white guys, going on an adventure.

I’m sure Ms. Lutgendorff’s comments will be hotly debated, but I think it’s foolish to ignore her gut reaction. Like it or not, the classics of an older generation are giving way to new novels, as they should. That’s what happens in a living genre. Read the complete article here.

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in July

The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in July

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Sherlock Season 3While we wait impatiently for the next episode of the popular BBC series Sherlock, the best way to pass the time seems to be to talk about the show with other fans. Bob Byrne proved this with the #1 post at Black Gate in July, his July 13th article “The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Sherlock Season 3 – What Happened?”, in which he observes the negative fan reaction to the third season:

Season three (finally) arrived. Hoo-boy. Not only did I see, I observed. And for the first time, I saw and observed a notable amount of unhappiness with the show. And with the second episode, it was certain that a shift had occurred among the fan base. It continued through the third (season finale) episode.

A significant number of folks grumbled about season three. Where there had been very little unhappiness with the first six episodes, an entire contingent of fans did not like season three and it impacted their overall attitude towards the show…

I will state categorically that the excitement for season four is not nearly as great and certainly isn’t as universal as it was for prior seasons. Now, a bit of that could be due to the loooong delay (season four has now been pushed to 2017).

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Flavorwire on the 10 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels of 2015 (So Far)

Flavorwire on the 10 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels of 2015 (So Far)

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The Whispering Storm-smallWe’re barely halfway through the year, but I suppose that’s far enough to start arguing over Ten Best lists. Yesterday Jonathon Sturgeon at Flavorwire kicked it off with a list of The 10 Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels of 2015 So Far, a list that includes Michael Moorcock, Neal Stephenson, Kim Stanley Robinson, Ian Tregillis, and Nicole Kornher-Stace. Here’s Jonathon on Michael Moorcock’s latest, The Whispering Swarm:

Moorcock is among the most influential of all genre writers, and he returns here with his first novel in nine years — and readers will be happy to learn that it launches a trilogy. Even though much of this first installment is given over to scene setting — it takes place in a hidden London enclave where historical figures mix with literary creations — it’s still a pleasure to read. Also, it may well inaugurate the autofictional fantasy subgenre.

He also has high praise for new writer Nicole Kornher-Stace, who thrilled me with a reading from Archivist Wasp at the World Fantasy Convention:

More than a little drunk on Greek mythology, Kornher-Stace’s Archivist Wasp tells the story of an “archivist” and ghost-hunter who learns to communicate with the specter of a supersoldier and (in the process) unlearns what she knows about her own horrorscape of a world. Smart, risk-taking, and weird as hell.

See the complete list here.

Starvation Cheap & Primeval Thule

Starvation Cheap & Primeval Thule

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Art by Klaus Pillon
Art by Klaus Pillon

Two Kickstarters that any adventure gamer should be involved with are ending in the next few days, and it’s long past time to call attention to them. Both might be of interest to writers as well, simply because the people behind them have created past efforts crammed with wonderful world-building and the tools for inspiring the same from their readers.

I’m referring to Sine Nomine’s Starvation Cheap Kickstarter, and Sasquatch Games’ Primeval Thule 5E Kickstarter. First up, because it’s over sooner, is Starvation Cheap.

Kevin Crawford IS Sine Nomine, the creative genius behind a whole raft of wonderful old school gaming products that can easily be plugged into modern games. From the start, everything he’s been involved with has been top-notch. You might have heard of Stars Without Number, or perhaps Silent Legions, or any  number of others that came from his fertile imagination. Layout and art are excellent, and so is editing (something you never notice unless it’s bad) but all of this fades into the background when you read the text and realize just how clever and inventive it all is. If you don’t believe me, download this free (also free of art) version of Stars Without Number and look at all the great world and setting generation tables. Story ideas just pop off of every page.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “The Phoenix on the Sword”

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “The Phoenix on the Sword”

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The Phoenix on the Sword Weird Tales-smallOver at Howard Andrew Jones’ blog, Bill Ward and Howard Andrew Jones continue their re-read of the first Del Rey Conan volume, The Coming of Conan, with the very first Conan story, “The Phoenix on the Sword,” originally published in the December 1932 issue of Weird Tales magazine. Here’s Howard:

Look at the story’s opening quote. That’s practically the gold standard of quotes from imaginary historical sources. That fabulous “Know, O Prince” and all that follows has been imitated but rarely, if ever, equalled. This, fellow fantasy fans, is the way it’s done. Admittedly, there are a few phrases in the middle of the paragraph that are less inspired. I’m looking at “Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem.” Most of the rest of the quote paints lovely word pictures, but those phrases don’t remotely approach the poetic majesty of the rest — what does Zingara look like? What does Koth look like? But the rest is lovely, and the quality picks right back up with “dreaming west” and powers on to that fantastic finish, “Hither came Conan…”

Look at the opening line of the story: “Over shadowy spires and gleaming towers lay the ghostly darkness and silence that runs before dawn.” Damn. Why doesn’t anyone write like that any more? Howard sets the scene with sharp, sensory laden description. He’s a film director guiding the camera with a fantastic establishing shot.

Their first post on this topic discussed Howard’s “The Hyborian Age.” Read the complete exchange here.

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