Search Results for: tale covers

Lord of a Shattered Land and The Doom of Odin: Howard Andrew Jones and Scott Oden Deliver High-octane, Euro-Mediterranean Adventure

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I just finished two Euro-Mediterranean-inspired fantasy novels, and, by chance, both feature dragons on their beautiful covers. This post showcases both. Scott Oden’s The Doom of Oden wraps up a trilogy (Grimnir Series) and Howard Andrew Jones’ Lord of a Shattered Land begins a five-book series (Hanuvar Chronicles). Each offers anti-Roman myths/legends, Oden’s Grimnir overtly calls out Rome (and then introduces loads of Nordic fantasy) and HAJ’s Hanuvar’s primary antagonist is the Dervan Empire (obviously inspired by the Roman Empire)….

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New Treasures: Ragged Maps by Ian R. MacLeod

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Ragged Maps (Subterranean Press, September 15, 2023). Cover by Dominic Harman Ian R. MacLeod’s novels include The Light Ages (2003) and sequel The House of Storms (2005), but his greatest acclaim has come from his short fiction. He’s produced no less than seven short story collections since 1996, including Voyages by Starlight (1996), Frost on Glass (2015), and the World Fantasy Award nominee Breathmoss and Other Exhalations (2004). His latest collection, Ragged Maps, was released by Subterranean Press in a…

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Disembodied Heads, War Robots, and Crime Hives: May-June 2024 Print SF Magazines

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May-June 2024 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Covers by Kurt Huggins (for “Uncle Roy’s Computer Repairs and Used Robot Parts”) and Shutterstock. There’s no sign of the new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction this month, which is a little concerning. Distribution issues caused the January/February issue to be renamed “Winter 2024” and ship significantly late, but now that spring and gone and summer is upon us, I’d hoped to at least…

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Vintage Treasures: Cave of Stars by George Zebrowski

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Cave of Stars (Eos/HarperCollins, December 2000). Cover art by Bob Eggleton I don’t know much about George Zebrowski. I probably should. According to ISFDB he’s written more than a dozen science fiction novels, including the John W. Campbell Award-winner Brute Orbits (1999). He’s edited over a dozen anthologies, including four Synergy volumes and three Nebula Awards collections, and was the editor of The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1970-74, and again from 1983-90. With his domestic…

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New Treasures: Gogmagog and Ludluda by Jeff Noon and Steve Beard

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Gogmagog and Ludluda (Angry Robot, February 13, 2024 and December 3, 2024). Cover art by Ian McQue I had a fruitful trip to the local Barnes & Noble last week. I brought home the latest issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog, as well as a nice assortment of recent-ish trade paperbacks. In the mix was a new novel by the team of Jeff Noon and Steve Beard, Gogmagog, with an intriguing cover that grabbed me immediately. I dipped into…

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Diving Deep (again) into the Wonder that is Terry Pratchett

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I am working on a post about my trip to the Greenbrier Resort, with the Wolfe Pack. It was a neat time, and I’ve got a ton of pictures. What I do not have is a completed essay yet. So, I should have that next week. Today I’m gonna talk a little more about Terry Pratchett. A few months ago, I decided to start re-reading – and listening to – some Discworld books. I’ve been a Pratchett fan for decades,…

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Vintage Treasures: Falling Free by Lois McMaster Bujold

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Falling Free (Baen Books, April 1988). Cover by Alan Gutierrez Lois McMaster Bujold is one of the most acclaimed writers in science fiction, with four Hugo wins for Best Novel under her belt (matching Robert A. Heinlein’s record), and three enormously popular series to her credit — the Miles Vorkosigan saga, the fantasy trilogy World of the Five Gods, and the Sharing Knife series. But in April 1988, when Falling Free appeared, she was a relative unknown. Her first novel…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings: Two-Thirds of a Miracle

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The Fellowship of the Ring (New Line Cinema, December 2001) Some of us waited a very long time for these movies — or at least, that’s how it felt. I grew up in the 1960s reading science fiction and fantasy; my father had read pulps like Weird Tales back in the ‘30s, and when those stories were republished as postwar paperbacks, he bought them and then passed them on to me. But I discovered Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy…

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Vintage Treasures: Sandkings by George R.R. Martin

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Sandkings (Timescape/Pocket Books, December 1981). Cover by Rowena Morrill Writing is a notoriously poor-paying profession. In 2017, after eleven months of work, I sold my first novel to Houghton Mifflin for $20,000 — about $10,000 below the poverty line for a family of five in Illinois. And I felt lucky to get it, believe me. So when someone like George R.R. Martin earns $9 million a year as a fantasy novelist, it generates a lot of wonder and amazement. And…

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The Chronicles of Future Earth Player’s Guide – Out Now!

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Way back in 2018, I wrote an article for Black Gate about the Kickstarter we were running for my science-fantasy roleplaying game, The Chronicles of Future Earth. Subtitled “Cosmic Fantasy Roleplaying in the Post-Historical Age”, it was a world of long-forgotten ancient technologies, strange mutated monsters, gods, demons, and weird intelligent species fighting against forces of entropy and domination threatening to destroy reality. Using a radical new version of the Fate Core rules system, it was a setting which had…

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