Cover by Sanjulian There’s been lots of buzz about the Tales From the Magician’s Skull Kickstarter here in the Black Gate offices. The first two issues — packed with sword & sorcery stories by James Enge, John C. Hocking, Chris Willrich, Howard Andrew Jones, C.L. Werner, James Stoddard, and Violette Malan — were a huge hit both with our staff and our readers. The brand new campaign to fund the third and fourth issues of the magazine wraps up this week,…
Recently Goodman Games announced a Kickstarter campaign to fund the launch of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, a magazine of all-new swords & sorcery fiction in the classic pulp style. The first issue is a delight for Black Gate readers, with tales from popular BG contributors James Enge, John C. Hocking, Howard Andrew Jones, Chris Willrich, Bill Ward, and others. And best of all, Goodman has invited Howard Andrew Jones on board as editor, guaranteeing a top-notch product. The spectacular success of the…
Three installments in The Heroic Legends Series from Titan Books: Conan: The Shadow of Vengeance by Scott Oden (January 30, 2024), Solomon Kane: The Hound of God by Jonathan Maberry (November 28, 2023), and Bran Mak Morn: Red Waves of Slaughter by Steven L. Shrewsbury (March 26, 2024) Pastiche — basically, licensed fan-fic — has been around as long as there has been fiction, but certain properties “lock in” on it; becoming sometimes so richly filled with authorized sequels, continuations…
Black Gate highlighted Rogues in the House (RitH) podcast in 2022, and in a few years, that crew rapidly expanded with Sword & Sorcery publications that include: A Book of Blades (2022) and A Book of Blades Vol. II (2023), and a collection of John R. Fultz’s stories in The Revelations of Zang (2024) This post reviews the newest collection of stories from RitH’s own Matthew John released this June: To Walk on Worlds is available now in eBook and…
Neither Beg Nor Yield (Rogue Blades Entertainment, April 2024) I can’t say if Jason M. Waltz and his Rogue Blades Entertainment’s swansong is the largest collection of Sword & Sorcery ever published, but it’s damn close. It’s also the most metal. From this over-the-top, blood-splash cover featuring an axe headed toward the reader’s face to the powerful black & white line art that runs throughout. there’s a Savage Sword of Conan-meets-Heavy Metal vibe to the layout that tells you exactly…
New Edge Sword & Sorcery issue #2, Winter 2023 (December 8, 2023). Cover by Gilead Artist The second issue of New Edge Sword and Sorcery has been getting far less attention than its debut, likely because it lacks a story by legendary writer Michael Moorcock, but that’s a shame, as it actually exceeds its predecessor in every demonstrable way. This is editor Oliver Brackenbury’s third time at bat (including the Zero Issue) and he’s clearly getting a feel for how…
New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, Fall 2023. Cover by Caterina Gerbasi Disclosure: I was a Backer for the first four issues of this new journal. As with the Zero issue, New Edge has absolutely fantastic, journal-level production values: heavy paper stock, trade or hard-cover binding, 8.5 x 11 stock, clean, professional layout, and absolutely terrific artwork. It looks great, feels great in the hand and has nothing amateurish about it. Whereas a counterpart magazine, Tales From the Magician’s Skull,…
It’s installment number seven in Bob’s Books Shelfie series. Links to the prior shelfie posts can be found at the end of this one; including some prior fantasy shelves. If you’re new to this column, I posted shelfies of over a thousand of my books, in the r/bookshelf subreddit. The mods got too annoying for me, and I quit the group. But with each shelfie I posted info on the books/authors show, so I’m bringing them over to Black Gate….
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…
Aleister Crowley Aleister Crowley, poet, mountaineer, religious mystic and self-proclaimed prophet, member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, drug addict, braggart, sexual adventurer, the self-named “Beast 666” and, according to the popular press, “The Wickedest Man in the World,” was one of the most notorious and controversial figures of his era and remains so even today, three quarters of a century after his death. W. Somerset Maugham, physician, world-traveler, wildly successful playwright (at one time he had four…