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Sunken Realms and a Road of Bones: Tales From the Magician’s Skull #5, edited by Howard Andrew Jones

Sunken Realms and a Road of Bones: Tales From the Magician’s Skull #5, edited by Howard Andrew Jones

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Tales From the Magician’s Skull #5 (Goodman Games, December 2020). Cover by Sanjulian

I don’t think there’s a magazine out there I look forward to as much as Tales From the Magician’s Skull, edited by Howard Andrew Jones and published twice a year by Goodman Games.

Yes, partly it’s because it regularly features so many people I consider friends, including James Enge, John C. Hocking, Ryan Harvey, Violette Malan, Adrian Simmons, and of course Howard, who was Managing Editor here at Black Gate for many years. If you’re a Black Gate reader in fact, you’re guaranteed to find a great deal you’ll love about the Skull — and not just because all of those lovely folks have written for BG over the years.

But I think the real reason I enjoy it is because the magazine is a tremendous amount of fun, and everything about it radiates an abiding love of adventure fantasy and sword & sorcery. Want an example? Here’s an excerpt from Howard’s introduction to the brand new issue — beginning with the welcome news that the magazine is open to submissions for the first time!

We will throw the gates wide on a trial basis for a limited time…. The Skull has decreed that we shall accept electronic manuscripts beginning on the anniversary of the birthday of the sacred genre’s father, Robert E. Howard, January 22, 2021, and close upon that date sacred to mortal fools, April 1, 2021…

Get more details on the Call for Submissions here.

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Immortality, Truth-Telling and Snow Witches: Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 47

Immortality, Truth-Telling and Snow Witches: Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 47

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We let Heroic Fantasy Quarterly loose on a chaotic world on January 31st. We’ve got a full compliment of stories and poems, including:

The Medallion’s Song, by Ginny Patrick, with artwork by Karolina Wellartova. Having been gifted a mysterious amulet by her imperious owner, young Serena is on the run, trying to get the funds to hitch a ride on a caravan out of town. But Macaea City has more than its share of dangers, and Serena has more than her own share of secrets.

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Cozy Catastrophes and Sinister Archaeology: Weird Tales #364 edited by Jonathan Maberry

Cozy Catastrophes and Sinister Archaeology: Weird Tales #364 edited by Jonathan Maberry

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Weird Tales #364. Cover by Lynne Hansen

As I write this, Weird Tales falls just two years short of celebrating its centennial — an astonishing feat, given that the fiction magazines in existence at that time, all considered far more prestigious than this lurid showcase of fantasy and horror, have vanished into time and space as if they never existed. (Only Argosy, revived in 2016 by Altus Press, matches it in longevity.) With such august placement in pop culture history, and given the differing tastes of its various editors (from Lin Carter to Ann VanderMeer), one might wonder if recent editions maintain the seminal publication’s pulp sensibilities while meeting exacting modern standards.

Under Jonathan Maberry’s editorial eye, that answer appears to be a resounding yes. With seven stories, four pieces of flash fiction, and two poems, Weird Tales #364 improves on its previous issue in the professionalism and sense of vision each writer brings as well as the sense of history infusing each work. As Maberry says in the introductory piece The Eyrie, “What delights me most as editor is that these stories are so diverse in terms of content, theme, styles, and genre. They don’t belong anywhere else — they are true Weird Tales.”

The magazine opens with Seanan McGuire’s “Too Late Now,” a Wyndham-esque “cozy catastrophe” lacking the coziness Wyndham brings to such works as The Day of the Triffids and The Chrysalids. Alien vegetation has overtaken life on earth, leaving humans to scavenge for non-organic goods (the plant life grows on almost any formerly organic matter) in order to maintain some semblance of society. Boston (people have begun naming themselves after cities and states in an effort to maintain continuity with the pre-Invasion world) is forced to take a team to the place where she lost her partner Jersey. McGuire mixes the worldbuilding she brings to such works as Every Heart a Doorway and Middlegame with adept pacing and suspense.

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Our Most Unusual Pulp Adventure

Our Most Unusual Pulp Adventure

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10 Story Mystery, April 1943, and The All-Story Detective, October 1949

Based on my experience, I think that non-collectors often view us collectors as somewhat crazy. They just don’t approach things the way we do, particularly when it comes to whatever particular obsession drives us. They don’t understand why we collect, and they don’t understand what we do to collect, and they don’t understand that the desire to collect can often override what most folks would consider to be common sense.

Case in point: Many of my non-collector friends are often horrified when I relate to them the tale of our most unusual pulp collecting adventure.

On a late fall day about 15 years ago, I read an ad in an antiques magazine regarding an upcoming auction in a neighboring state. The auction mentioned pulps and showed a few. So Deb and I got up very early the day of the auction and drove for several hours. The auction was being held in a large, unheated building, and both of us were quite cold the whole time. We’d arrived with enough time to quickly browse through the material – there were several lots of pulps among the hundreds of lots being auctioned, but most of the material was non-genre, everything from tools and hardware to furniture to farm equipment to household items to architectural salvage. None of the pulps were particularly rare, but many were in nice condition.

I think the auction began around 11:00 a.m. Unfortunately, there was no order to it. Whatever item happened to strike the auctioneer’s fancy at any given moment would be auctioned off, with no rhyme or reason as to when something would be coming up. After a while a few pulp lots came up, which I won, but then he moved on to other things, leaving most of the pulp lots still to come. Every hour or so, he’d get to a few more pulp lots, and then switch to something else. Needless to say, it was extremely frustrating.

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Startling Stories Returns

Startling Stories Returns

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The first issue of Startling Stories in 65 years, courtesy of Wildside Press and Douglas Draa. Cover uncredited.

Startling Stories was one of the grand old ladies of the pulp era. Published by Standard Magazines between January 1939 and October 1955, it was one of the few SF magazines of the 30s to outgrow its pulp roots and become a serious market of adult science fiction, eventually publishing stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Leigh Brackett, Jack Vance, Ray Bradbury, A.E. van Vogt, Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Edmond Hamilton, Fletcher Pratt, and many others.

I’m delighted to report that Startling Stories has been revived as part of the stable of magazines at John Gregory Betancourt’s Wildside Press. The editor is Douglas Draa, who also helms the revived version of Weirdbook.

The first issue of the revived magazine — and the first new issue of Startling Stories in 65 years — was published on February 1st. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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A Modest Little Magazine: Whispers edited by Stuart David Schiff

A Modest Little Magazine: Whispers edited by Stuart David Schiff

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Assorted issues of Whispers, 1973-87. Issues #1, 2, 4, 9, 13-14, 15-17, 17-18, 19-20, and the final issue, 23-24.
Covers by Tim Kirk (1,3), Stephen Fabian (2,9,13-24,23-24), John Stewart (13-15,16-17), and Kevin Eugene Johnson (19-20)

When I started Black Gate magazine, I drew inspiration from small press magazines of the 70s, 80s and 90s that I deeply admired. It was a a fairly short list, but it included W. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook, the Terminus Weird Tales edited by George H. Scithers, John Gregory Betancourt and Darrell Schweitzer, and Stuart David Schiff’s Whispers.

Whispers was near-legendary by the late 90s, when I was getting serious about starting my own magazine. The last issue had been published in 1987, but in its 15-year run it published original fiction and poems by Stephen King, Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, Karl Edward Wagner, Roger Zelazny, Michael Shea, Manly Wade Wellman, Ramsey Campbell, William F. Nolan, David Drake, Ellen Kushner, Steve Rasnic Tem, Carl Jacobi, Hugh B. Cave, Phyllis Eisenstein, Joseph Payne Brennan, Dennis Etchison, Robert Aickman, Glen Cook, Charles L. Grant, Gerald W. Page, Lisa Tuttle, Richard A. Lupoff, Janet Morris, and many, many others.

It also published original artwork by many of the greatest horror and fantasy artists of the 20th Century, including Michael Whelan, Stephen Fabian, Lee Brown Coye, Allen Koszowski, Vincent Di Fate, Charles Vess, Hannes Bok, and numerous others.

One of the many inspirational things about Whispers — apart from its phenomenal success — was that it was virtually a one-man operation. Stuart Schiff grew his tiny magazine from humble beginnings as essentially a slender black-and-white fanzine in 1973 into one of the most influential horror mags of the century, with a spinoff line of paperback anthologies, limited edition hardcovers, magazines supplements, and of course a Best of collection.

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Alien Eggs, a Diligent Salesman, and a Robot Psychiatrist: Three Stories by Idris Seabright

Alien Eggs, a Diligent Salesman, and a Robot Psychiatrist: Three Stories by Idris Seabright

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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1952. Cover art by Chesley Bonestell

For my next look at older stories which I think are both good, and worth looking at closely, I’m covering three stories by one “Idris Seabright.” “Who she?” you might ask, or even “Who he?,” as the currently most famous Idris in the world is a man. “Idris Seabright” was a pseudonym used by the SF writer Margaret St. Clair for about 20 stories, all in the ‘50s. The “Seabright” name was used almost exclusively for stories published in F&SF – the single exception is one of her most famous stories, “Short in the Chest,” which appeared in Fantastic Universe. (The ISFDB credits a curious Seabright outlier, a story published in Spanish only, very late in St. Clair’s life, in 1991. I feel this must be a translation of an earlier Seabright story though I’m not sure which one. The story is called “La Estrana Tienda,” which means “The Strange Store” or perhaps “The Mysterious Shop.”)

Margaret St. Clair (1911-1995) was one of the more noticeable early women writers of SF, but somehow her profile was a bit lower than those of C. L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and Andre Norton. I guess I’d say that those writers did just a bit more, and were just a bit better (taken as a whole) than her, but it does seem that she’s not quite as well remembered as perhaps she deserves. One contributing factor is probably, however, that many of her best and most interesting stories were as by “Idris Seabright.” In addition, those of her novels I’ve read were less successful than her short fiction. Her career in SF stretched from 1946 to 1981. Her husband, Eric St. Clair, was also a writer (of children’s books), and the two became Wiccans more or less when the Wiccan movement started.

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Crimson Mists and Uncrowned Kings: Savage Scrolls, Volume One, edited by Jason Ray Carney

Crimson Mists and Uncrowned Kings: Savage Scrolls, Volume One, edited by Jason Ray Carney

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Savage Scrolls, Volume One (Pulp Hero Press, 2020). Cover uncredited.

Last summer there was an ugly incident involving the long-awaited publication of Flashing Swords #6 from Pulp Hero Press, the spiritual successor to Lin Carter’s legendary sword-and-sorcery series from the 70s. Editor Robert M. Price’s introduction, which read to me like an incoherent right-wing rant against feminism, proved toxic enough that four contributors pulled their stories immediately, and publisher Bob McLain made the decision to de-list and kill the book before it even went on sale.

That left plenty of good tales without a home, though Bob did promise that some would find a home in “a new anthology series – no politics, no drama, just sword-and-sorcery! – that I’d like to release later this year.” So I was especially intrigued to see the first volume of Savage Scrolls, a new Swords & Anthology series edited by the distinguished Jason Ray Carney, arrive from Pulp Hero in November. I ordered a copy last month, and I’m delighted to say it’s a thoroughly professional production.

And what a list on contributors! In addition to two tales salvaged from Flashing Swords (Adrian Cole’s Elak of Atlantis tale “The Tower in the Crimson Mist,” and Steve Dilks’s sword & sorcery “Tale of the Uncrowned Kings”), Savage Scrolls includes names that will be intimately familiar to Black Gate readers, including Howard Andrew Jones (with a new Hanuvar tale), James Enge (a new Morlock the Maker story), David C. Smith (a new Oron adventure) and D.M. Ritzlin (with a tale of Avok the Cytheran). In a Publisher’s Note at the back, Bob McLain teases readers with a promise that

The cover art will tell a story, spread over four volumes of Savage Scrolls. On the cover of this volume we have our characters on the cusp of battle: the barbarian, the cultist, and the sorceress. On the cover of the next volume we will have those same characters, with the barbarian, well, you’ll just have to wait and see.

A bold promise! Though why he’d draw such attention to the intriguing cover and then completely neglect to credit the artist, I have no idea. The artist isn’t credited anywhere, far as I can find. Maybe that’s part of the mystery.

Jason Ray Carney’s first blog post for Black Gate was Bran Mak Morn: Social Justice Warrior, and he’s promised us a behind-the-scenes peek at Savage Scrolls in the coming weeks.

Alien Warfare, Gunwrights, and Cyborg Hobos: January/February Print SF Magazines

Alien Warfare, Gunwrights, and Cyborg Hobos: January/February Print SF Magazines

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I haven’t had time to jump into my plaguemobile and navigate all the pandemic roadblocks and decontamination checkpoints to get to Barnes & Noble to pick up the latest print magazines. But according to what I’ve read online, I don’t have any choice… looks like these are can’t-miss issues. Here’s what Michelle Ristuccia at Tangent Online said about the latest issue of Asimov’s SF.

American combat veteran Sylvia Aldstatt is the only person on Earth who can search dead criminal Dimitrios’ memories for crucial intel in “A Rocket for Dimitrios” by Ray Nayler. Racing against the ticking clock of decomposing neural pathways, Sylvia Aldstatt investigates Dimitrios’ claim of a second crashed extraterrestrial ship… Nayler brings readers an adventure that’s as immersive as it is thought-provoking. “A Rocket for Dimitrios,” stands alone as an engaging and accessible novella for all genre readers, but spy novel enthusiasts will recognize the nod to Eric Ambler’s classic 1967 novel, A Coffin for Dimitrios. Readers who want more of Nayler’s fascinating alternative history SF can find Sylvia Aldstatt in “The Disintegration Loops,” published first in Asimov’s Nov/Dec 2019 issue and also now available on Ray Nayler’s website…

Suzanne Palmer brings readers a delightfully comedic who-done-it set on a menagerie of a space station in “Table Etiquette for Diplomatic Personnel, in Seventeen Scenes.” Through Palmer’s strategic humor, readers soon identify the obnoxious Joxto as the main antagonists of newly appointed Station Commander Niagara, though she has yet to meet the infamous aliens herself. She’ll get her chance soon enough… Palmer brings her station and the larger universe to life through the POV’s of several station inhabitants, painting readers a vivid picture through casually dropped space lore, a melting pot of clashing cultures, and truly alien extraterrestrials who resemble sea cucumbers, birds, and overly curious pumas. Running jokes and excellent comedic timing provide an enthralling mix of slap stick and sitcom drama…

The moment after Lieutenant Balázs’ starship bridge is breached and most of its bridge crew incapacitated, “Hunches” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch begins. Reeling from the unexpected attack, Balázs soon realizes he is the only crew member left conscious on the bridge.. Rusch brings us an action-packed story of split-second decisions and willing sacrifice, of heroic acts performed in the absence of sufficient information but with the help of a little luck and a lot of perseverance…

Here’s all the details.

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Bran Mak Morn: Social Justice Warrior

Bran Mak Morn: Social Justice Warrior

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Worms of the Earth by Robert E. Howard (Ace Books, 1979). Cover by Sanjulian

“Worms of the Earth” was published in Weird Tales in November of 1932, and was thus described in the table of contents as “a grim shuddery tale of the days when Roman legions ruled in Britain–a powerful story of a gruesome horror from the bowels of the earth.” It features Bran Mak Morn, the King of the Picts, one of Howard’s barbarian characters. A quasi-Faustian tale, the story dramatizes Bran Mak Morn’s greatest transgression, a dark pact the king makes with diabolic force to avenge his dying and brutalized race: the Picts.

Many consider “Worms of the Earth” one of Howard’s masterpieces, truly haunting and enigmatic, its impact lingering long after a reading, like a stagnant tobacco smell or a leathery flapping of shadowy wings. The story is also notable for its inclusion of allusions to H.P. Lovecraft’s mythos, specifically the ancient Mesopotamian god “Dagon” and the sunken city of “R’lyeh,” home to dreaming Cthulhu. Undoubtedly, the story’s themes of racial degeneracy and the violent power of geologic time are steeped in Howard’s legendary 1930s correspondence with Lovecraft.

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