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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 New Dungeons & Dragons Movie Will Be Set in The Forgotten Realms

The New Dungeons & Dragons Movie Will Be Set in The Forgotten Realms

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Drizzt Do’Urden-smallWe’re learning more about the new Dungeons & Dragons movie announced by Warner Bros. this week.

The first D&D movie, produced by New Line Cinema in 2000, was an epic failure (and its sequel was even worse), but this film will be produced by the studio behind The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter franchises, which has been on the hunt for a premium fantasy property for some time. An ongoing lawsuit over ownership of the D&D film rights prevented the project from going ahead, but Variety reports that dispute has finally been resolved.

A movie based on the widely popular game Dungeons & Dragons is in the works at Warner Bros., the studio announced Monday, 10 months after a trial over who owned the rights to the fantasy game ended.

After months of negotiation, Warner Bros., Hasbro’s Allspark Pictures and Sweetpea Entertainment said they had come to an undisclosed arrangement, ending the 2-year-old lawsuit, and are moving forward with the feature film franchise. David Leslie Johnson (The Conjuring 2) has already written the screenplay set in the D&D fantasy world of [The] Forgotten Realms. Hasbro’s Brian Goldner and Stephen Davis, Sweetpea Entertainment’s Courtney Solomon and Allan Zeman, and Roy Lee (The Lego Movie) are producing the high-priority project.

“This is far and away the most well-known brand in fantasy, which is the genre that drives the most passionate film followings,” said Greg Silverman, Warner Bros. president of creative development and worldwide production. “D&D has endless creative possibilities, giving our filmmakers immense opportunities to delight and thrill both fans and moviegoers new to the property…”

The Forgotten Realms, created by Ed Greenwood in 1987, is home to the drow ranger Drizzt Do’Urden, the mighty wizard Elminster, and countless other famous D&D characters. It has been featured in over 200 novels and countless adventure modules and supplements.

Read the complete article at Variety.

Book Riot Suggests 9 Books That Will Challenge Your Idea of Fantasy

Book Riot Suggests 9 Books That Will Challenge Your Idea of Fantasy

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Imaro-smallOver at book site Book Riot, Troy L. Wiggins has posted an excellent list of fantasy books that venture outside the ordinary.

Fantasy recommendation lists are characterized by their safety. Curious newcomers to the genre, having enjoyed their sample of escapist literature, request more stories, more worlds to lose themselves in. More often than not, though, the recommendations that they receive are the same few critically acclaimed authors… My belief is that Fantasy literature is the perfect lens for readers to challenge our ideas of humanity, violence, society, and power. My recommendations in this list (yes, another list!) will reflect that belief. Buckle up.

His list includes The Worldbreaker Saga by Kameron Hurley, A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar, Aliette De Bodard’s Obsidian & Blood, and the too-often overlooked Imaro series by Charles Saunders.

On the other side of the “often gets compared to Conan the Barbarian” coin we have Charles Saunders’ Imaro series, a groundbreaking series of sword and sorcery novels and short stories set on the fictional continent of Nyumbani, which serves as an alternate world representation of the African continent. Imaro is the very first representative work of a genre called “Sword and Soul,” which takes fantasy out of Medieval Europe and places it in Africa. Imaro is a one of a kind type of book series, and finishing it can lead you down a rabbit hole of Sword and Soul titles – the genre itself is experiencing something of a resurgence.

Read the complete list here.

Sasquan Announces Record Voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards

Sasquan Announces Record Voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards

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SasquanSasquan, the 73rd World Science Fiction Convention, announced this morning that voting for the 2015 Hugo Awards has reached record levels.

Sasquan is pleased to announce that it received a record­breaking 5,950 valid ballots for the 2015 Hugo Awards. 5,914 voters used the online voting system and 36 submitted paper ballots. The 5,950 total surpasses the vote total record for previous years (3,587 ballots, set by Loncon in 2014) by more than 65%.

More than 57% of the convention members eligible to vote cast ballots this year, making this the highest level of participation in Hugo Awards voting in the past decade.

Sasquan will announce the Hugo Awards winners Saturday, Aug. 22, at 8 p.m. at a ceremony hosted by authors Tananarive Due and David Gerrold.

For those unable to attend the ceremonies, Sasquan will also live stream the Awards ceremony here. There will also be a text stream available on the Hugo Awards webpage.

Voting for the Hugos is now closed. Sasquan will release final vote counts at the conclusion of the Aug. 22 ceremony.

Black Gate declined our first Hugo nomination this year, on account of the bloc voting from the Rabid Puppy campaign. My comments on this year’s Hugo ballot are here.

The August Fantasy Magazine Rack

The August Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Beneath-Ceaseles-Skies-177-rack Black-Static-47-rack Clarkesworld-106-rack Knights-of-the-Dinner-Table-220-rack
Interzone-259-rack Lightspeed-July-2015-rack Nightmare-Magazine-July-2015-rack Shimmer-26-July-2015-rack

Summer is a great time for reading, and there were some fabulous new magazines released last month. The Fantasy Magazine rack is a snapshot of all the recent fantasy fiction magazines that deserve your attention. Magazines are a great way to discover new writers — not to mention reviews, news, opinion, and an entertaining way to keep up with the industry.

Check out all the details on the magazines above by clicking on the each of the images. Our July 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 $7.50/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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The Mystery of Peter S. Beagle’s I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons

The Mystery of Peter S. Beagle’s I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons

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I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons-smallPeter Beagle is one of the finest living fantasy writers. His 1968 novel The Last Unicorn has long been considered a classic, and The Innkeeper’s Song (1993) and Tamsin (1999) were both nominated for the World Fantasy Award. His 2007 novel I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons isn’t as well known as some of his others, but it has its fans. It’s currently ranked at 3.88 (out of 5) at Goodreads, and it has five stars at Amazon.com. Beagle has drummed up a lot of interest in it over the years by reading chapters at various conventions (you can watch him do a public reading of the first chapter here).

I’ve been dying to get my hands on a copy myself. But that’s proven to be fairly tricky because, as it turns out, the book doesn’t exist.

I’m sure this has frustrated more than a few Beagle collectors, because it can take a while to figure this out. Even the Internet Speculative Fiction Database thinks this book exists. And, as far as I know, Amazon and Goodreads aren’t generally in the habit of listing books that don’t exist. But trust me. This ain’t a book.

The closest I’ve come to finding an explanation is this brief note at the bottom of an excerpt from the novel at Green Man Review, quoting a defunct section of Beagle’s website:

The story was originally supposed to be a 40,000 word novella, no longer. But it grew. The first draft came in at more than twice that: nearly 90,000 words… I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons was originally contracted to Firebird Books, and announced for a Summer 2007 release — but completion of the final draft was delayed as the manuscript insisted on growing, and because of time lost to unavoidable family issues, so the book was rescheduled for Summer 2008. Before it could be turned in, however, a serious business conflict came up between Peter and Penguin USA over the 40th Anniversary Edition of The Last Unicorn. This ultimately led Peter to conclude that after many years of association with Penguin imprints it was time to move on. Since Firebird was a Penguin imprint, that meant pulling I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons.

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I Voted For the Hugos

I Voted For the Hugos

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2011 Hugo Award-smallYesterday, I cast my vote for the 2015 Hugo awards.

It was my first time voting for the Hugos (yay!). But I’ve never been nominated for a Hugo Award before either, so this is pretty much the year for milestones all around. For the record, here’s what I ranked in first place in each category:

Best Novel – The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (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) – Edge of Tomorrow
Best Dramatic Presentation (Short Form) – Orphan Black: “By Means Which Have Never Yet Been Tried”
Best Professional Editor (Short Form) – No Award
Best Professional Editor (Long Form) – No Award
Best Professional Artist – Julie Dillon
Best Semiprozine – Beneath Ceaseless Skies, edited by Scott H. Andrews
Best Fanzine – Tangent Online, edited by Dave Truesdale
Best Fancast – Galactic Suburbia Podcast
Best Fan Writer – Laura J. Mixon
Best Fan Artist – No vote cast
The John W. Campbell Award – Wesley Chu

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NK Jemisin Profiled at The Guardian

NK Jemisin Profiled at The Guardian

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NK JemisinNK Jemisin is one of the finest new writers to arrive on the fantasy scene in the last decade. Her new novel The Fifth Season will be published by Orbit next month, and yesterday the UK newspaper The Guardian posted an intriguing profile and interview with the author, in which she addresses, among other things, the ongoing Sad Puppy debate.

Jemisin is on the phone from her not-very-epic day job as a university administrator in New York. When she gets off the phone, she says, she’s going to bike to a coffee shop to write her thousand words for the day, a pace that allows her to finish about a novel a year…

“As a black woman,” Jemisin tells me, “I have no particular interest in maintaining the status quo. Why would I? The status quo is harmful, the status quo is significantly racist and sexist and a whole bunch of other things that I think need to change. With epic fantasy there is a tendency for it to be quintessentially conservative, in that its job is to restore what is perceived to be out of whack…”

Earlier this year, a number of writers and sci-fi industry insiders began to organise and protest against the fact that nominees for the Hugo awards have become substantially less white and less male… Jemisin is obviously no fan of the Puppies, but she sees a positive side effect from their crusade. “What I find heartening,” she said, “is the sheer amount of laughter the Puppies are engendering as they demand that what they call ‘affirmative action’ works no longer be considered, but really at the same time, they’re putting only their own friends on the ballot. So they’re actually asking for their form of affirmative action to replace what they think of as affirmative action. And everyone is realising it. People are looking at these authors [like Vox Day and Puppies leader Brad Torgerson], who they once took seriously, and now just pointing and laughing.”

Read the complete article here.

Enter the Grimdark Magazine Battle-off Competition

Enter the Grimdark Magazine Battle-off Competition

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Grimdark Magazine Battle-off Competition

Grimdark Magazine is getting some great notices among fans of heroic fantasy — including from our own Fletcher Vredenburgh, who said in his review of the first three issues, “From a swords & sorcery perspective, the biggest — and potentially most interesting — new publication out there is Grimdark Magazine.” Grimdark editor-in-chief Adrian Collins contacted us this morning to let us know of a new contest sponsored by the magazine, open to heroic fantasy writers of all kinds. Here’s the deets:

We’re running a competition over at Grimdark Magazine that may interest some of Black Gate‘s followers — both readers and writers. It’s a battle-off, where self and small published authors enter a 1K word excerpt featuring a battle scene, the readers then vote on a top 7 and a panel of judges then decide on the top 3 to win awards.

It will run for a couple of months between mid August and the end of October… There are some pretty awesome prizes up for grabs, including a Kindle HD, signed hardcovers, plenty of paperbacks and ebooks, editing services and cover art services.

This is one of the most unusual writing contests I’ve heard of, and I highly approve. So sharpen your pens, all you aspiring adventure fantasy writers. This is your chance to show that you have the chops to deserve wider attention — and maybe win something that could help your new novel really stand out. Get the complete details here.

Chuck Wendig Writes an Open Letter: “Dear Guy Who is Mad Because I Wrote a Gay Character in a Book”

Chuck Wendig Writes an Open Letter: “Dear Guy Who is Mad Because I Wrote a Gay Character in a Book”

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Blackbirds Chuck Wendig-smallChuck Wendig, author of Star Wars: Aftermath, Blackbirds, and The Blue Blazes, has written an open letter to a fan who complained because one of his characters was gay:

Earlier today I got a bit of hate mail — though I guess hate mail is strong, as the writer of said email was not like, threatening to murder me with a brick or anything — from what appears to be a male, adult reader of my young adult series. In particular, he read the third book in the series, which came out last week: The Harvest.

I won’t reprint the email here, but he said, and I quote, “I didn’t like that you had a main gay character reviling [sic] in a homosexual sexual relationship.” (Reveling, I guess he means?) He feels I “corrupted” the book with the presence of “gay male relationships.” He then added that he feels I was jumping on some kind of “bandwagon,” which I assume (he did not clarify) means that I was doing this to fill some kind of diversity bingo card. Finally, he concluded that it “didn’t matter” or “effect [sic] the story” that the character was gay so why include it at all?

Here is my response that I won’t actually bother sending to him, but maybe he’ll read it here.

Read Chuck’s complete response here.

Kelly Swails reviewed Blackbirds for us (“Chuck Wendig’s Blackbirds is Punch-You-in-the-Face Good“), and James McGlothlin looked at The Blues Blazes (“Goblins, Demons, Zombies and Fights Aplenty: A Review of The Blue Blazes.”)

Nominees for the 2015 British Fantasy Awards Announced

Nominees for the 2015 British Fantasy Awards Announced

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The Relic Guild Edward Cox-smallThe nominees for the 20015 British Fantasy Awards have been announced by the British Fantasy Society.

The British Fantasy Awards have been given out every year since 1972, when Michael Moorcock received the first award for his novel The Knight of Swords. Back then it was called the August Derleth Fantasy Award, and was only given to novels. As the BFS grew, the awards began to widen their scope, adding categories for Best Short Story, Small Press, Art, Comics, Film, and more. In 2012, the best novel category was divided into best horror novel (the August Derleth Award) and best fantasy novel (the Robert Holdstock Award).

The complete list follows. Congratulations to all the nominees!

Best Fantasy Novel – The Robert Holdstock Award

Breed, KT Davies (Fox Spirit Books)
City of Stairs, Robert Jackson Bennett (Jo Fletcher Books)
Cuckoo Song, Frances Hardinge (Macmillan Children’s Books)
A Man Lies Dreaming, Lavie Tidhar (Hodder & Stoughton)
The Moon King, Neil Williamson (NewCon Press)
The Relic Guild, Edward Cox (Gollancz)

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