Search Results for: tale covers

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Paul Bishop on The Fists of Robert E. Howard

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I am currently working on a couple essays. A very positive one about The Caine Mutiny as a book, big screen movie, TV movie, stage play,  and radio play.  And a friend called the latest Hercule Poirot movie, A Haunting in Venice, “amazingly good.” That’s exactly the opposite of what it is. I’ll be expressing my disappointment with that one soon. I’ve already re-shared a couple of the excellent Pulp-related essays that were a part of Black Gate’s terrific Discovering…

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I Was A Teenage Abomination from Another Dimension: The Inhabitant of the Lake & Other Unwelcome Tenants by Ramsey Campbell

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Dear Mr. Campbell, I have received your stories, but I have had time to read only one or two of them. I don’t want to comment on them in extended fashion until I’ve read all, but I do think them competent. However, there is one alteration I think you should definitely make; Mr. Wandrei would insist on it, and that is to remove your stories from the Lovecraft milieu. I mean, keep the Gods, the Books, etc., but establish your…

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The Complete Version of John C. Hocking’s Conan: Black Starlight is Now Available

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Conan: Black Starlight (Titan Books, October 17, 2023) The name John C. Hocking is well known to long-time Black Gate readers. He published several terrific stories in the print version of the magazine, including two tales in his Brand the Viking series, and the opening stories in his popular Archivist series, “A River Through Darkness and Light” and “Vestments of Pestilence,” which was continued in Skelos and Weirdbook. He’s also launched a brand new series, the King’s Blade tales, in…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Peak ‘90s Wuxia

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Dragon Inn (Hong Kong, 1992) Wuxia, which roughly translates as “chivalrous martial heroes,” is the term for armed historical martial arts adventures, fantasy tales with a history in China dating back to early medieval times. Wuxia stories were adapted to film in China as early as the 1920s, but they were never a major genre until revived in the ‘60s and ‘70s in Hong Kong cinema by directors King Hu and Chang Cheh. Wuxia movies were eclipsed by the kung…

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Vintage Treasures: The Med Series by Murray Leinster

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The Med Series (Ace, May 1983). Cover by James Warhola For most of its life John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction was the most important SF magazine on the stands. It was the beating heart of the genre in a way that’s tough to comprehend today, in a market that’s grown far beyond print. Campbell made his mark by discovering, nurturing, and publishing the most important writers of his day. But — quite cleverly, I think — he also cultivated…

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Vintage Treasures: This Immortal by Roger Zelazny

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This Immortal (Ace Books, September 1980). Cover by Rowena Morrill Two weeks ago I dashed off a Vintage Treasures piece on Larry Niven’s first collection Neutron Star, the first I’d ever done on Niven, and it helped me realize that there are several other major writers sorely underrepresented in these pages. Near the top of that list is Roger Zelazny, one of the most important fantasists of the 20th Century, and the man behind much of the work that turned…

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Viy by Nikolai Gogol

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Viy is the colossal creation of the common folk’s imagination. The Little Russians (Ukrainians) use this name for the chief of the gnomes, whose eyelids on his eyes reach all the way to the ground. This whole story is a folk legend. I did not want to change anything about it, so I am narrating it in almost the same simple form which I heard it. Nikolai Gogol, footnote to “Viy“ None of that is true. There are no Slavic…

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Alien Devil Trees, Deadly Cargo, and the Blob: September-October 2023 Print SF Magazines

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September-October 2023 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, Tomislav Tikulin, and Marianne Plumridge There’s plenty of great stuff in this month’s print magazines, including a new Diving Universe novella by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, an homage to the 1958 classic The Blob by Eric Choi, a chilling story of the Dead Letter Office by David Erik Nelson, the gruesome secret of the alien Deviltree by…

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Vintage Treasures: Neutron Star by Larry Niven

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Neutron Star (Ballantine Bools, April 1968). Cover artist unknown As I was preparing last week’s Vintage Treasures article (on Poul Anderson’s Fire Time), I realized that the next book on deck was Neutron Star, by Larry Niven, one of the most important science fiction collections of the 20th Century. And I simultaneously realized we’ve never done a Vintage Treasures feature on Niven before, a pretty serious oversight. (For comparison purposes, as I was assembling reference links at the bottom of…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Beware of Greeks

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Xena and Hercules If you were watching TV in the late ‘90s, it was pretty hard to avoid Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules series and its spinoffs, even if you wanted to. Despite its modest budget, unambitious stories, and mostly indifferent acting, this likable family-friendly series nonetheless found an audience devoted enough to sustain it through six TV seasons. There was clearly a hunger for solid fantasy adventures, and Hercules fed that demand. In fact, the Herc series revealed so much demand…

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