Search Results for: tale covers

NEW EDGE SWORD & SORCERY MAGAZINE First Two Issues Released

Comments 4 comments

October 2022, Michael Harrington hosted an interview with Oliver Brackenbury on Black Gate; Brackenbury is the editor and champion of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine. That post coincided with the release of the teaser Issue #0 including short fiction & non-fiction (free in digital format, or priced at cost on Amazon Print-on-Demand, through the New Edge Website). In Feb. 2023 Black Gate announced the magazine’s Kickstarter which succeeded and spurred the creation of the illustrated Issues 1 & 2 that are being…

Read More Read More

Units of Conviction: Being Michael Swanwick

Comments 5 comments

Being Michael Swanwick (Fairwood Press, November 21, 2023) Prolificity is in the DNA of science fiction. H. G. Wells, whose most famous works date back to the 1890s, wrote some fifty novels, seventy non-fiction books, and one hundred short stories. Pick almost any SFWA Grand Master and you’ll encounter a bibliography that will engulf your life for many months, if not years. How many shelves to house the hundreds of books published, for instance, by Andre Norton, or Poul Anderson,…

Read More Read More

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Ashes of Time

Comments 3 comments

Ashes of Time (Hong Kong, 1994/2008) Chinese director Wong Kar-wai, whose films are visually intense, almost hallucinogenic, had a long-time love of the wuxia genre, and in the early ‘90s, when he was having trouble raising money for his production company, he agreed to make a historical martial arts film based on the classic Condor Heroes stories. Excited by the story but wanting it to be perfect, he spent almost three years on the project, but the result was Ashes…

Read More Read More

Mission to the Mesozoic: The Shores of Kansas by Robert Chilson

Comments 2 comments

The Shores of Kansas (Popular Library, March 1976). Cover by Mariano Here’s another in my series of reviews of fairly obscure books from the ’70s and ’80s. Like some others, this review is of a book I bought at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention in Lombard, IL, earlier this year. Rob Chilson is a Kansas City based writer (though born in Oklahoma) whose first story appeared in Analog in 1968. (Likely he is one of the few John…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: The Bard Series by Keith Taylor

Comments 15 comments

Bard, Volumes I-IV (Ace Books, 1981-97). Covers by Don Maitz In October 1975 an unknown author named Dennis More made his debut in Fantastic magazine with “Fugitives in Winter,” the rousing tale of Felimid mac Fal of Eire, a bard whose tools are his ancient harp Golden Singer, and his magic sword, Kincaid. Eight more tales of Felimid followed, in places like Fantastic, Weird Tales, and Andrew Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness. ‘Dennis More,’ as it turned out, was Australian writer…

Read More Read More

Dread Monsters and Sinister Menaces: The Worlds of James H. Schmitz

Comments 5 comments

Three Bean omnibus reprint volumes featuring James H. Schmitz: Telzey Amberdon, Agent of Vega and Other Stories, and Eternal Frontier (March 2000, November 2001, September 2002). Covers by Bob Eggleton Two years ago I created a Facebook post about a Black Gate Vintage Treasures article on James H. Schmitz’s 1979 novel Legacy. One of the interesting things about Facebook is that you’ll occasionally get comments years later, and that’s what happened this time. On November 3rd of this year Allan…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Out on Blue Six by Ian McDonald

Comments 0 Comment

Out on Blue Six (Bantam Spectra, May 1989). Cover by Will Cormier Ian McDonald has written some of the most acclaimed science fiction of the last four decades. His first novel Desolation Road (1988), about an oasis town on a far-future Mars, won the Locus Award, and his King of Morning, Queen of Day (1991) won the Philip K. Dick Award. His novels River of Gods, Brasyl, and The Dervish House were all nominated for the Hugo Award, and he’s…

Read More Read More

Donald A. Wollheim and the Death of the Future

Comments 12 comments

The 1987 World’s Best SF (DAW Books, June 1987). Cover by Tony Roberts I’ve been reading a lot of older science fiction recently, though not in a very organized fashion. I pulled Wollheim’s 1987 World’s Best SF off the shelf this morning to read Pat Cadigan’s cyberpunk Classic “Pretty Boy Crossover,” which I saw on the table of contents of Jared Shurin’s The Big Book of Cyberpunk. I prefer to the read the original, when I can. Of course I…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Black Spaniel and Other Strange Stories by Robert Hichens

Comments 5 comments

The Black Spaniel and Other Strange Stories (Stark House, November 1, 2023) Stark House has performed an extraordinary service for lovers of classic weird fiction with their excellent line of Stark House Supernatural Classics, which has returned forgotten tales by Algernon Blackwood, Robert W. Chambers, and many others into print in handsome and inexpensive paperback editions. They’ve produced more than a dozen titles over the last seventeen years, with no sign of slowing. Stark House doesn’t specialize in supernatural fiction….

Read More Read More

OLD MOON QUARTERLY Issue V Review plus a Kickstarter for VII and VIII

Comments 0 Comment

Old Moon Quarterly magazine, Issue #5 (138p). Cover art by Derek Moore Old Moon Quarterly is a magazine of dark fantasy and weird sword-and-sorcery. In the tradition of Clark Ashton Smith, Tanith Lee and Karl Edward Wagner, it contains stories of strange vistas, eldritch beings, and the bloody dispute thereof by both swordsmen and swordswomen. Old Moon Quarterly emerged in 2022 led by Editor-in-Chief Julian Barona, flanked by Assistant Editors Caitlyn Emily Wilcox and Graham Thomas Wilcox. This May 2023,…

Read More Read More