Browsed by
Category: News

Announcing the 2016 Robert E. Howard Foundation Award Winners

Announcing the 2016 Robert E. Howard Foundation Award Winners

Comments 5 comments

The Robert E. Howard Foundation

The winners of the 2016 Robert E. Howard Foundation Awards were announced earlier this month at the REH Days celebration in Cross Plains, Texas. Several Black Gate contributors were honored with nominations this year, 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

The REH Foundation Awards honor the top contributions from the previous year in Howard scholarship and in the promotion of Howard’s life and works. The top three nominees in each category were selected by the Legacy Circle members of the Foundation and the winners were voted on by the full membership of the Foundation.

The complete list of winners follows.

…

Read More Read More

2016 Locus Award Winners Announced

2016 Locus Award Winners Announced

Comments 0 Comment

Uprooted-Naomi-Novik-smallThe Locus Science Fiction Foundation has announced the winners of the 2016 Locus Awards, and you know what that means. Cake and drinks for everybody!

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 were announced yesterday, during the annual Locus Awards Weekend in Seattle WA.

The winners are:

FANTASY NOVEL

Uprooted, Naomi Novik (Del Rey)

SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL

Ancillary Mercy, Ann Leckie (Orbit)

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

The Shepherd’s Crown, Terry Pratchett (Harper)

…

Read More Read More

Tor.com is Buying Science Fiction Novellas

Tor.com is Buying Science Fiction Novellas

Comments 3 comments

Tor.com bannerTor.com is on a roll. Their new line of novellas has been a commercial and critical hit — the $2.99 digital price pretty much makes them irresistible, and Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti just won a Nebula Award. Plenty of others in their catalog are getting award attention, too. And in addition to their premium publishing line, they continue to publish fine novellas for free on their website.

All in all, it’s not an exaggeration to say that Tor.com has helped usher in a new era for the novella in SF & Fantasy publishing. They certainly haven’t done it alone — Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and other top sites have all recently announced that they’re starting to publish longer work — but they’ve definitely led the way in making the novella sexy again.

So I was delighted to see Tor.com recently open a new reading period for unsolicited novellas. Here’s the announcement.

Starting June 5th, Lee Harris and Carl Engle-Laird will be reading and evaluating original novellas submitted by hopeful authors to http://submissions.tor.com/tornovellas/. You can find full guidelines here, and we highly recommend you read the guidelines, because we’re doing things a little differently this time. Until the end of June, Tor.com will only be considering novellas of between 20,000 and 40,000 words that fit one of the following science fiction subgenres:

  • Time Travel
  • Space Opera
  • Near Future Thriller
  • Cyberpunk

…As always, both Lee Harris and Carl Engle-Laird actively request submissions from writers from underrepresented populations. This includes, but is not limited to, writers of any race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, class and physical or mental ability.

If you’ve had that unfinished space opera/cyberpunk thriller gathering dust on your hard drive, now is definitely time to polish it off an submit it! Read complete details here.

Goth Chick News: This Will Not End Well…

Goth Chick News: This Will Not End Well…

Comments 4 comments

This seems like a great idea zombieYou don’t need to have spent thousands of hours sitting in front of horror movies to know this is an extremely bad idea.

US biotech company Bioquark and its ReAnima project has been granted authorization and ethical permission to use 20 brain-dead patients for what is sure to be a highly controversial study: Starting next year, they plan to stimulate their nervous systems in order to restart the brains. Bioquark is hoping that its part in the groundbreaking ReAnima project will reveal if people can at least partly be brought back from the dead.

Zombies anyone…?

The idea here is that several different techniques, such as, “…injecting the brain with stem cells, giving the spinal cord infusions of beneficial chemicals, and nerve stimulation techniques” will all be tested to see if reanimation is possible.

According to the Bioquark website:

Our definitions of death may have to change in the very near future, as well as our understanding of consciousness and the stability of memory persistence.

So let’s ponder this for a moment.

…

Read More Read More

Announcing the 2015 Bram Stoker Award Winners

Announcing the 2015 Bram Stoker Award Winners

Comments 0 Comment

A-Head-Full-of-Ghosts-smallerBack in February, Goth Chick announced “Your Dark and Stormy Night Reading List” — the nominees for the The Horror Writers Association’s 2015 Stoker Awards for superior literary achievement in horror, in a variety of categories. The Bram Stoker Awards were instituted in 1987 and the eleven award categories are: Novel, First Novel, Short Fiction, Long Fiction, Young Adult, Fiction Collection, Poetry Collection, Anthology, Screenplay, Graphic Novel, and Non-Fiction.

That’s a lot of great horror reading. Now, the Bram Stoker awards are traditionally given out at the World Horror Convention, but this year changed things up a little. The 2015 honors were awarded on May 14, 2016 at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, during the first annual StokerCon — which sounds like it was a blast.

Congratulations to all the winners! And for all you readers, we suggest you start loading up your Amazon wish list immediately.

For Superior Achievement in a Novel

For Superior Achievement in a First Novel

  • Mr. Suicide, Nicole Cushing (Word Horde)

…

Read More Read More

The 2015 Nebula Award Winners

The 2015 Nebula Award Winners

Comments 1 comment

Henry Lien and the Eunuchs of the Forbidden City perform the brilliant Radio SFWA at the 2016 Nebula Awards 2-small

Henry Lien and the Eunuchs of the Forbidden City
perform the brilliant “Radio SFWA” at the 2016 Nebula Awards

I attended the 2016 Nebula Awards banquet here in Chicago on Saturday night, and I thought that meant I’d be able to announce the winners in a timely fashion. Instead, I wasted my time hobnobbing with winners, nominees, and just all around cool people until very late in the evening, got home at 2:15 am, and fell asleep for roughly 24 hours. So I’ve been scooped by every website in the industry (and even some periodicals that only publish monthly).

Ah, that’s okay. For those loyal readers who steadfastly looked away when other sites reported the winners, and waited with confidence for the Black Gate report, thank you (both of you.)

The highlight of the weekend was the awards ceremony, hosted by the genuinely hilarious John Hodgman (from The Daily Show). And the surprise highlight of the ceremony was the opening number by Henry Lien and the Eunuchs of the Forbidden City, “Radio SFWA,” which I’ve been humming non-stop for the past two days. You don’t attend an SF conference expecting to hear live pop music, much less an 80s New Wave/Space Disco anthem that doubles as a recruitment tool for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, but that’s exactly what it was. I’m a 52 year-old guy who can’t dance, but at the end I was on my feet, pounding my hands together and ready to jump into the mosh pit.

Songwriter, lead singer and front man Henry Lien is some kind of genius. Listen to the whole thing here (be sure to read the hilariously brilliant lyrics by clicking “Show More”), and read the background here.

…

Read More Read More

Support the Launch of Skelos, a New Magazine of the Weird

Support the Launch of Skelos, a New Magazine of the Weird

Comments 12 comments

Skelos Journal of the Weird-small

It’s always exciting to hear about the launch of a new fantasy magazine — and it’s especially exciting when it’s as promising as Skelos, a new journal of Weird Fiction and Dark Fantasy.

Skelos is edited by a trio of Weird Fiction rock stars — Jeffrey Shanks, co-editor of the fabulous Unique Legacy of Weird Tales, Mark Finn, noted blogger and author of the World Fantasy Award-nominated Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard, and Chris Gruber, editor of Robert E. Howard’s Boxing Stories, from the University of Nebraska Press.

The Kickstarter campaign to fund the first issue is already at 150% of goal in barely 24 hours — which means that the first issue of Skelos will be arriving this summer. It will be packed with new fiction and great art, including a never-before-published fantasy piece by Robert E. Howard, illustrated by none other than Mark Schultz. Here’s the complete details.

…

Read More Read More

The 2016 Locus Award Finalists

The 2016 Locus Award Finalists

Comments 3 comments

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)

…

Read More Read More

The Hugo Nominations, 2016; or, Sigh …

The Hugo Nominations, 2016; or, Sigh …

Comments 32 comments

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.

…

Read More Read More

SF Signal Goes Dark

SF Signal Goes Dark

Comments 12 comments

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.