Black Gate – Page 290 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: The Monstrous Citadel by Mirah Bolender

Saturday, November 23, 2019 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Cover art by Tony Mauro

I found Mirah Bolender’s debut novel City of Broken Magic waiting for me when I got home from the World Fantasy Convention last year. I liked the premise quite a bit — a city in which a understaffed bomb squad must deal with leathly deadly weapons left over from a long-forgotten war. Liz Bourke at Tor.com summarized it nicely:

City of Broken Magic sets itself in a secondary fantasy world where humans live huddled into well-defended cities. Hundreds of years before the novel’s beginning, a colonised people tried to fight back against their colonisers by creating a weapon that ate magic. They succeeded a little too well, creating something that can hatch from broken or empty magical amulets and that can consume everything in its path. These infestations, as they’re known, are extremely dangerous and require specialised knowledge and equipment to combat. The people who do this job are known as “Sweepers,” and their mortality rate can be high…

The novel’s worldbuilding, in the form of infestations and the social response to it, is its big idea. City of Broken Magic is the story of an emergency response unit, and in narrative and stylistic terms, it feels one part thriller, one part procedural, and one part professional coming-of-age for its viewpoint character. Bolender writes action very well, building tension into every escalating encounter with infestations… City of Broken Magic is a fast-paced, exciting ride. And an entertaining one.

The book earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

Monsters are threatening to take over the city of Amicae. The government has convinced residents that the monsters can’t get in, but Clae and Laura know that isn’t true. They are Sweepers, the only people in the city qualified to fight the monsters… they take on mobsters, corrupt businessmen, and a deliberately skewed cultural narrative, culminating in a fight to protect their city from its own refusal to accept reality. Amicae’s strict caste system is expertly woven into the fast-paced plot that will keep readers turning pages until the very end.

The sequel, The Monstrous Citadel, the second novel in the Chronicles of Amicae, sees the Sweepers face new threats, including gangs, ungrateful bureaucrats, and the grasping ambition of Rex, the City of Kings, which breeds its own monsters. The Monstrous Citadel was published by Tor on November 5, 2019. It is 415 pages, priced at $18.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital versions. The cover art is by Tony Mauro. Read Chapter One of from City of Broken Magic here, and a lengthy excerpt at the Tor-Forge Blog. See all our recent New Treasures here.

Galaxy Science Fiction, September 1954: A Retro-Review

Friday, November 22, 2019 Matthew Wuertz Comments 0 Comment

Art by Ed Emshwiller

I find the cover of the September, 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction a bit risque for Ed Emshwiller (a piece titled “Robots Repaired While U Wait”). Editor H. L. Gold produced a magazine that you wouldn’t have to hide from people, unlike other fiction offerings that had much more salacious artwork (please don’t attach any to this article, John). But you may have to keep this issue face-down around coworkers and family.

“The Man Who Was Six” by F. L. Wallace — Dan Merrol doesn’t know who he is anymore. Ostensibly, he’s Dan Merrol, but his body is unrecognizable, even to himself. After a horrific accident, doctors used an amalgamation of human donors to heal Dan’s broken body. With legs of different lengths, arms of varying bulk, and multi-colored hair, Dan’s become a laughable caricature of humanity. But it’s not just his body; his damaged brain was also rebuilt using slivers of other brains, giving him memories of lives he never lived. He wants to return to a normal life as a pilot and try to resume his marriage, if his wife could possibly still love the creature he’s become.

I like how Wallace examines Dan’s predicament. The initial confusion, the stages of grief in dealing with who and what he’s become. It maintains a somber tone but allows for lighter moments.

“A Start in Life” by Arthur Sellings — Em and Jay are robots raising two unrelated six-year-old children (a boy and a girl). Their world is confined, and there are no other humans to interact with. The children begin asking more questions about their world, and Em is hesitant to share anything new. The truth will come out eventually, but is this the right time, she wonders?

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Lost Classics of the Pulps: Guy Boothby’s The Curse of the Snake

Friday, November 22, 2019 William Patrick Maynard Comments 1 comment

The Curse of the Snake is the Guy Boothby title I have been waiting years to read. I previously covered the five books in his Dr. Nikola series as well as his 1899 novel, Pharos the Egyptian for Black Gate. Boothby is an author whose works have fallen into relative obscurity, but his influence was quite pervasive. A contemporary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker, he turned out works that stand up well against their more celebrated efforts. Most importantly, the influence of Dr. Nikola is felt heavily upon Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu series and the character of Ernst Stavro Blofeld from Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Boothby’s great flaw was that he was a prolific author of serialized novels who made no effort to correct inconsistencies when his works were published in book form. This hurt his reputation and, along with the speed with which he produced new works, unfairly suggested he was little more than a hack.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Alexis Gilliland

Friday, November 22, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

The Best Fan Artist category was not one of the original Hugo categories in 1953, not introduced until 1967, when it was won by Jack Gaughan. The award has been presented every year since then. Gilliland was nominated for the Hugo every year between 1978 and 1985, winning that award in 1980 and for three years running from 1983 to 1985. While several fan artists have won the award more times than Gilliland, his three year streak ties those of Tim Kirk and Brad W. Foster for consecutive wins.

The Fan Activity Achievement Awards, or FAAN Awards were founded in 1976 by Moshe Feder and Arnie Katz. Created to highlight writing in fandom, they differed from the Fan Hugos in that they were voted on specifically by fanzine fans. The original awards were presented at various convention. Following the 1980 awards, the awards were on hiatus until 1994 and have been presented each year since, with the exception of 1996. Alexis Gilliland won the last of the original run of FAAN Awards for Best Fan Artist—Humorous, his third sequential win. The first winner was Bill Rotsler. The category was not revived after the hiatus, being combined with the Best Fan Artist—Serious category and replaced by the Best Fan Artist category. Gilliland was nominated for The FAAN Award for Best Humorous Art in three consecutive years from 1978 through 1980.

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Goth Chick News: Thanksgiving History Makes for a Horror Feast

Thursday, November 21, 2019 Sue Granquist Comments 0 Comment

Considering all the stories one hears about how stressful Thanksgiving family time can be, it’s surprising that the annual bacchanalia of feasting and intoxicated relatives has not been fodder for more Thanksgiving-themed horror movies. There have been a few of course, such as Home Sweet Home and Thankskilling, but they have been campy and largely forgettable, in spite of the bewildering amount of material to work with.

But, as we reported last week, Jason Blum and his crew at Blumhouse Productions are on a very entertaining roll turning your cherished memories upside down. Last year they joined forces with Hulu for an analogy project called Into the Dark, dedicated to releasing holiday-themed horror films every month. Blumhouse’s Thanksgiving offering for 2019 will likely go down in history as the best Thanksgiving-horror movie tie in ever.

In a collaboration between screenwriter Noah Feinberg and the writing duo Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (Feast, Saw IV-VII) Pilgrim isn’t just a horror story that happens to be set during Thanksgiving, but instead is a film steeped in Thanksgiving history and tradition; all of which is perversely twisted for our enjoyment.

A woman invites Pilgrim re-enactors into her home to give her family an authentic recreation of the first Thanksgiving, all in the hopes that they’ll put down their phones, cast their differences aside, and learn to truly appreciate one another – if only for a couple days. But when the actors refuse to ever break character and their behavior becomes increasingly concerning, the lessons they bring may come at a deadly cost.

Not long after daughter Cody wishes on a turkey wishbone that her step-mother’s Thanksgiving plans backfire in her face, Pilgrims Ethan (Peter Giles) and Patience (Elyse Levesque) arrive at the family’s home and her fears (and wishes) come true. Ethan and Patience represent Puritanical extremism at its most frightening and aren’t afraid to get a whole lot of blood on their hands in the process of spreading their message. Their mission is simple: make the family appreciate what they’ve got.

Check out the trailer….

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Dark Cults and Alien Mysteries: Warhammer 40,000: The Magos by Dan Abnett

Thursday, November 21, 2019 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I’ve gotten in the habit of listening to audiobooks as I take the train into Chicago every morning. Yes, it’s a little risky to be wearing headphones in the middle of that jostling crowd, completely caught up in tales spun by skilled narrators while blithely stepping out into traffic. Someday you may read a somber obituary that claims I was splatted by a fast-moving cab. But know that I died happy.

This morning I was enjoying the new Eisenhorn “novel” by Dan Abnett, The Magos, which is really a fat collection of short stories (plus a new novel). And I was completely and utterly caught up in Toby Longworth’s brilliant narration of “The Curiosity,” the short tale of a taxonomist who finds himself in a life-and-death hunt for an alien beast in the mist-crowded hills of a backward province. I found this brief review at Track of Words that let me know there are other tales featuring Valentin Drusher, magos biologis, and that makes me happy.

First published in 2003 in Inferno! magazine, Dan Abnett’s short story “The Curiosity” offers the first glimpse of Valentin Drusher, magos biologis… Dispatched to a bleak, distant province to investigate sightings of an unknown beast that’s left a trail of corpses behind it, it’s not long before he realises this is more than just an apex predator he somehow missed. Caught up in the hunt for the beast, Drusher is out of his league and in terrible danger…

Drusher may be an amateur sleuth rather than an inquisitor, but that just makes the situation that bit more dangerous. It’s a nicely self-contained story, complete with all the descriptive scene-setting and strong, effective characterisation that you’d expect from Abnett, and the slightly baffled, eccentric Drusher is instantly engaging. In the grand scheme of 40k the stakes are small, but away from the battlefields and in context of a simple, rural community there’s more than enough drama for this to be gripping and entirely satisfying.

The Magos is available in print and on audio, but you really haven’t experienced this story until you’ve listened to Longworth’s deep, resonant (and surprising versatile) voice bring it to life — preferably while watching Chicago slide by through a rain-slicked window. Highly recommended. The audio version is 20 hours, and sells for $22.90 on Audible.

Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2019 edited by Paula Guran

Wednesday, November 20, 2019 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Usually when I write a Future Treasures piece, it’s about a book that hasn’t been published yet. And that applies in this case. The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2019, the tenth volume in Paula Guran’s excellent anthology series, definitely ain’t out yet.

Now, the official publication date was yesterday, so this is a little frustrating. I look forward to this book every year. It’s the companion to my favorite Year’s Best volume, Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, and Paula is one of the most experienced editors in the business. She has a sharp eye for delightful and surprising fiction, and this year’s volume — with stories by Tim Powers, Jeffrey Ford, Simon Strantzas, Tim Lebbon, Naomi Kritzer, Mary Robinette Kowal, E. Lily Yu, Isabel Yap, Michael Wehunt, Steve Rasnic Tem, Brian Hodge, Robert Shearman, Angela Slatter, M. Rickert, and many others — looks like a terrific package. But despite having an official pub date of November 19, it’s listed as unavailable at every online outlet I’ve checked.

I assume this is something that the publisher, Prime Books, will sort out in the next few weeks (they usually do). In the meantime I shall wait patiently, as I look over the delicious Table of Contents with great anticipation. Here it is.

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The Diamond Service Brigade

Wednesday, November 20, 2019 Steve Carper Comments 0 Comment

In 1931 the Mid-Continent Petroleum Company was hot stuff. Its 6,000 Diamond dealers owned the upper Midwest and could found as far south as Oklahoma, not surprising since it was the biggest employer in its home base of Tulsa. NevrNox Ethyl gasoline, the company boasted, provided the highest mileage of any product on the market. Mid-Continent was cutting edge, both in the science behind their formulations and in the way they presented them. 1931 was the year it pioneered a new type of service station, one that was to take over the field in the 1940s. Mimicking the modernistic International Style, that first Supulpa, OK, station had expanses of plate glass set in unpainted aluminum frames and walls of vitrolite, a black structural glass.

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Terror, Existential Dread, and Surprised Laughter: A Review of Spectral Realms #11

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 carlreed Comments 10 comments

Cover by Daniel V. Sauer

Spectral Realms magazine is a square-bound journal of weird poetry, reviews, and articles launched in 2014 and published twice yearly by S. T. Joshi — the field’s foremost scholar, writer, advocate, and critic. If ever there was a man who should need no introduction, Mr. Joshi is he — 300+ books to date and counting. An avowed rationalist, rapier-witted satirist (in the savage tradition of Bierce, Twain, and Mencken), and sometime crafter of his own macabre tales, S. T. Joshi bestrides the entirety of weird fiction like a colossus. His error-corrected drafts of the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Arthur Machen, George Sterling, Ambrose Bierce, Algernon Blackwood, et. al. — produced through an exhaustive and meticulous examination of extant hand-written copy, typescripts, and published versions — serve as the final word on these respective writers’ original aesthetic intentions and lasting literary legacy. To those who know, the words “texts by S. T. Joshi” prominently displayed on a book’s cover assure the discriminating reader that he or she is perusing an author’s truest, error-corrected, “best” published version of any given work.

So it is no small matter when a man of S. T. Joshi’s stature and first-rate scholarship decides to launch a new journal dedicated to the poetic expression and criticism of the weird.

Hippocampus Press announced the inaugural issue of Spectral Realms to the reading public thusly. (I quote the passage in its entirety, as it cannot be improved upon — no better introduction and summarizing mission statement can be crafted):

The spectral realms that thou canst see
With eyes veil’d from the world and me.
—- “To a Dreamer,” H. P. Lovecraft

The last few decades have seen a remarkable efflorescence of weird poetry, to such a degree that we can authentically state that a renaissance of the genre is underway. Hippocampus Press has always been committed to this most rarefied mode of expression, and now Spectral Realms, published in Summer and Winter, leads the way.

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The Cost of Publishing Through a Small Press

Tuesday, November 19, 2019 S.M. Carrière Comments 0 Comment

chizine-publications

I’m sure many of you by now have heard of the sudden controversy that erupted around Canadian horror/speculative fiction publisher, ChiZine. The story has been picked up by Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware. You always know it’s bad when Writer Beware gets involved. For those of you who are blissfully unaware of the situation, good for you. Stay that way if you can. If you insist on knowing it all, I can recommend a great round-up by High Fever Books (here). Start at the bottom and work your way up through the updates.

It’s bad.

For the most part, there has been an outpouring of support for those affected; the authors who were not paid, and the former staff who were so atrociously abused. As with all controversies, however, there have been a number of bad takes. The worst has come from an editor by the name of Stephen Jones, who had this to say:

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