Merry Christmas from Black Gate

Merry Christmas from Black Gate

Comments 23 comments
The Black Gate Christmas Tree

This has been a rough year for Black Gate. On January 16 we lost Howard Andrew Jones, who created this site virtually single-handedly. Black Gate had existed as a print magazine since November 2000, and I’d launched the website a few months earlier, but it was a pretty flimsy affair. Not much more than a place to sell subscriptions, and host our submissions page and occasional guest articles by Rich Horton and James Enge.

Howard dreamed of something vastly more ambitious — creating the premier site for heroic fantasy on the internet, with daily content from a round robin of some of its best writers. It was impossible, of course. Our overworked staff was already struggling to keep the magazine alive, and I had no time — and certainly no budget! — to spend on a project that didn’t address the fact that I was losing $10,000 every issue.

Howard ignored these minor problems, and all on his own assembled a crack team of bloggers including Bill Ward, David Soyka, Scott Oden, James Enge, EE Knight, and Ryan Harvey. By November of 2008 he launched the Black Gate blog, and for the last seventeen years we’ve produced at least one article every day. In 2016, we won and Alfie Award and a World Fantasy Award, and crossed 2 million page views/month.

…

Read More Read More

A Boy Scout’s Handbook: The Mysterious Island

A Boy Scout’s Handbook: The Mysterious Island

Comments 3 comments

One of the more popular time-wasting activities these days is the “desert island” game, where people compile lists of books, albums, and movies that they could in no instance dispense with, works that they would take with them if they had to be exiled for life on a desert island. In this exercise, esthetic or just plain entertainment qualities reign supreme, but if we were talking about surviving on an actual island, uninhabited, unsettled, untamed, practical considerations would come to the fore; I don’t think The Sopranos would be of much use when it came to building a shelter or planting a crop, and as for Survivor, is there anything more contrived than a “reality” show? (My actual TV choice, Green Acres, would be marginally better but still likely inadequate.)

As for books, I recently read something that would definitely make the real desert island cut — Jules Verne’s The Mysterious Island. It’s a veritable Swiss army knife of a book, full of useful hints and practical advice, whether you want to lower the level of a lake, make nitroglycerin, cook a capybara or construct a seaworthy, two-hundred-ton ship from scratch. It’s a book no Boy Scout should leave home without.

Published serially in 1874 and 1875, The Mysterious Island is a classic Robinsonade, a genre named after Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. Robinsonades are books in which people are shipwrecked on isolated islands or stranded in other remote areas and are thrown back almost entirely on their own resources. Inherently dramatic, such stories have proven enduringly popular, with examples such as Johann Wyss’s The Swiss Family Robinson, R.M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies rarely if ever falling out of print.

…

Read More Read More

Iron Lung vs The Establishment

Iron Lung vs The Establishment

Comments 2 comments

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

I feel like I manifested this… But I’m getting ahead of myself. Does anyone remember me lamenting about how difficult it was for original or new folks to break out in the entertainment industry? I’ve been griping since Adam was knee-high to a grasshopper (how’s that for a malaphor?) that original stories aren’t getting made anymore, with production companies all settling for established IPs with a huge fanbase they can take advantage of. Smaller stories, no matter how good they might be, are left in the dust because creative risks are just not done any longer.

It’s been a point of ire of mine for a while now. And then, as if answering the call, in comes a YouTuber with a fully independently produced and distributed film based in the world of a fully independently created video game. Alright, technically it is an adaptation, but the fact that the game is independent, small, and not widely known in the way, say, the Assassin’s Creed Franchise is, means that this one counts. It counts, alright?

Also, I believe this is not the story in the game, but in the world of the game, but I’ll explain later.

…

Read More Read More

That Annual Audible Sale 2025 (What I’ve Been Listening To)

That Annual Audible Sale 2025 (What I’ve Been Listening To)

Comments 0 Comment

I have been using my library app a lot for audiobooks the past few months. I just borrowed (not all at once. I’m not a twit) the entire Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio shows, as part of my Douglas Adams rabbit-hole trip (which started when I listened to this book).

At the same time, I was listening to the early Cole and Hitch Westerns, from Robert B. Parker. You might have read about the great job Titus Welliver (Bosch) does reading those, here.

While using the library app more, I still have my Audible sub. And they do a BIG sale every year. Every title is on sale to some extent. Compared to last year, it seems like either the base prices were higher, or the percent reductions were less. However, I set my limit at $4 per title, and spent quite a few hours looking up authors and delving into subjects. I didn’t buy as many titles as I did last year. And I was hoping some things sitting in my Wish List since last year’s sale (like The Keep on the Borderlands) would be in my price range. Not even close. But I still picked up nearly two-dozen books – many for around $2.

CASTLE PERILOUS – John DeChancie

DeChancie wrote eight books in this series between 1988 and 1994. They aren’t quite as humorous as those classic-style paperback covers might lead you to believe:  like Craig Shaw Gardner’s stuff, or even Piers Anthony’s Xanth books. Maybe ‘fantastical’ is more appropriate. A little whimsical. 144,000 doors in the mysterious Castle lead to other worlds/aspects – one of which is Earth. It’s ruled by the sorcerer Incarnadine, and people who find their way to the Castle often become Guests, and stay. The series involves key characters in wild adventures – often with villains trying to take over the Castle.

…

Read More Read More

The Stories Before the Story – Half a Century of Reading Tolkien, Part Eight: The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien (mostly)

The Stories Before the Story – Half a Century of Reading Tolkien, Part Eight: The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien (mostly)

Comments 20 comments
First edition, UK

Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass. The Dispossessed they be for ever.

from Chapter 9 The Flight of the Noldor

I took The Silmarillion to camp with me the summer of 1978. I’d gotten it for Christmas the previous year, but I was put off by its Biblical diction. Still, I was determined to make my way through it. I mean, Tolkien was my favorite author, and I’d already read The Hobbit twice and Lord of the Rings, including the appendices.

I did read it that summer in the woods of Upper Delaware Valley. For all the activities, there was always free time to read, and read I did. Beside Tolkien’s book, I read Cajus Bekker’s A War Diary of the German Luftwaffe. Bekker’s book was a relatively easy undertaking, Tolkien’s was not.

…

Read More Read More

The Star Warses — Part 2

The Star Warses — Part 2

Comments 0 Comment
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Walt Disney Studios, December 14, 2015)

Read Part 1 here.

#6 – The Force Awakens (2015)

A great way to kickstart the franchise after a dozen years, even if it is a retread of A New Hope. There’s a lot to love in this film; I think it features some of Williams’ best work with recurring leitmotifs that instantly feel like they’ve been part of the entire saga, I love the new principal characters, the action set-pieces are thrilling and tick all my visual/sound design boxes, I really like all the Jakku scenes, especially Rey’s introduction, I can’t get enough of the X-wing attack outside Maz Kanata’s castle — the single tracking shot of Poe Dameron handing the New Order their arses in the air sends shivers up my spine, the respect shown to the Falcon, despite an ugly radar dish, and the unsubtle nostalgia threads woven throughout.

There’s not much on show that I don’t enjoy in this one; perhaps the superfluous scene with the betentacled beasties onboard Han’s hideous new ship, or the petulant Ren stuff, but I mostly get on fine with it all. One personal sticking point for me though is the inclusion of Simon Pegg as Unkar Plutt (he of the measly muffin portions). I used to be a huge fan of his, firstly in Spaced, and then in Edgar Wright’s Cornetto Trilogy, but his ongoing vocal hatred for the prequels and the ‘death’ of Star Wars used to get on my nerves.

…

Read More Read More

Tor Doubles #36: Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness

Tor Doubles #36: Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness

Comments 5 comments
Cover for Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness by Wayne Barlow

Originally published in August 1991, Tor Double #36 offers two stories by Fritz Leiber, doubling the number of his stories included in the series. It also brings the official Tor Double series to an end, although just as I began by looking at a proto-volume in the series, I’ll be covering one last Tor Double next which, which was never published.

Conjure Wife was an originally published in Unknown Worlds in April 1943. The novel would eventually be awarded a Retro-Hugo, beating out works by C.L. Moore & Henry Kuttner, Herman Hesse, C.S. Lewis, A.E. van Vogt, and Leiber, himself. The novel is also listed in James Cawthorn & Michael Moocock’s Fantasy: The 100 Best Books and David Pringle’s Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels.

The novel follows Norman Saylor, a sociology professor at a small, conservative liberal arts college, Hempnell College. Saylor’s life is going well, he and his wife, Tansy, have a large circle of friends, his students respect him, and he is up for appointment to head the sociology department. Despite these seemingly close relationships with Tansy and their friends, most of the novel is focused on Norman’s thoughts and broodings, with little real interaction with anyone, certainly not over the important matters that concern him.

…

Read More Read More

The Bio of a Fantasy Giant: To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy, by Jon Tattrie

The Bio of a Fantasy Giant: To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy, by Jon Tattrie

Comments 6 comments
To Leave a Warrior Behind (McClelland & Stewart, January 20, 2026)

Charles Saunders, the Father of Sword & Soul, was one of the most talented and beloved heroic fantasy writers of the last fifty years. That he died unknown, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Nova Scotia in June 2020, is one of the great tragedies of our genre.

The thing about great writers is that they don’t stay buried. When the news of Charles’ untimely death began to spread, it was met with an outpouring of grief and heartfelt tributes. David C. Smith wrote the touching memorial Charles, My Friend in December 2020, and Michael de Adder produced a superb comic strip bio for the Washington Post three years after his death. Greg Mele wrote Black Gate‘s obituary, and Seth Lindberg crafted a detailed survey of his most famous work in the Imaro Series Tour Guide. And a year after Charles’s death, Jon Tattrie raised $17,000 to erect a gravestone to mark his grave.

Now comes word of a more enduring tribute, and one that I hope will help the world understand and appreciate Charles’ remarkable legacy. Jon Tattrie, who worked alongside Charles for two years at the Halifax Daily News, has written To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy, which will be released in hardcover next month from McClelland & Stewart.

…

Read More Read More

The Tarzan of Outer Space: Balzan of the Cat People by Gerry Conway

The Tarzan of Outer Space: Balzan of the Cat People by Gerry Conway

Comments 2 comments


Balzan of the Cat People: The Blood Stones (Pyramid Books, May 1975). Cover artist unknown

Writing under the name Wallace Moore, Gerard F. Conway (1952 -), produced a 1970s trilogy billed as “The Tarzan of Outer Space.” Conway is known mostly for his comic book writing for Marvel and DC, where he wrote as Gerry Conway and is best known for co-creating the Punisher in 1974. He also has some TV and film credits, including for Conan the Destroyer.

I haven’t read any of his comics but have read the first two in his trilogy, and I own the third. I bought them because they have been billed as Sword & Planet fiction. I suppose they fit, although they’re not exactly typical, being more Tarzan than John Carter. The covers certainly stress that resemblance.

…

Read More Read More

The Best Vintage Paperbacks of 2025

The Best Vintage Paperbacks of 2025

Comments 6 comments
Chris Gunter’s choice for the best vintage paperbacks of 2025. Finally a socially relevant Year’s Best list

Ah, the end of the year. When social media — and my email in-box — are filled with Best of the Year lists.

I’m not complaining. I love ’em. But the ones I most enjoy are (of course) lists that include delightful old paperbacks finds. Or are maybe, I dunno, exclusively old paperbacks, since that’s about 90% of my own reading these days.

This year I especially enjoyed old books by Lin Carter (Flashing Swords 2), Jerry Pournelle (West of Honor), C.J. Cherryh (Faded Sun: Kutath) and Clifford D. Simak (City). Not too surprisingly, my favorite 2025 Best of the Year list (so far) has been a short post by Chris Gunter on the Vintage Paperback and Pulp Forum on Facebook, which enthusiastically included classics by Alfred Bester, Keith Roberts, Bob Shaw and others.

…

Read More Read More