By Joe Bonadonna This is an excerpt from “Withering Blights,” by Joe Bonadonna, featured in Lovers in Hell, edited by Janet Morris and Chris Morris. It is presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Joe Bonadonna and Perseid Press, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2018 by Joe Bonadonna. Doctor Victor Frankenstein, whose brain resides inside the skull of his infamous Monster, is back to his old tricks…
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Of those values that Master Malrubius (who had been master of apprentices when I was a boy) had tried to teach me, and that Master Palaemon still tried to impart, I accepted only one: loyalty to the guild. In that I was quite correct — it was, as I sensed, perfectly feasible for me to serve Vodalus and remain a torturer. It was in this fashion that I began the long journey by which I have backed into the throne….
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In the last centuries of the Fifth Cycliad, a great malaise began to descend on the lands of humankind. The civilizations of the Earth, which for aeons had seemed on the verge of slumber, now finally began to rot from within. From the edges of the world, the ever-present enemies drew close, their hungry claws poised to tear apart the delicate flesh of a fruit a hundred millennia in the ripening. And all around, a cry arose for Heroes, to…
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By Andrew P. Weston This is an excerpt from Hell Gate by Andrew P. Weston, presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Andrew P. Weston, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Hell Gate will be available in trade paperback and digital editions. Copyright 2018 by Perseid Press. The Angel Grislington is dead, effaced from existence during an epic battle with Daemon Grim that destroyed a Zion forged blade…
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We lost Gardner Dozois unexpectedly in May of this year. Certainly there were bigger names, but somehow Gardner always seemed to be the heart of science fiction to me. Fan, historian, gifted writer and brilliant editor — indeed, perhaps the greatest editor science fiction has ever seen — Gardner had his finger on the pulse of the field better than anyone I knew. It was a terrible blow to lose him. But I took some consolation in the fact that…
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The cocktail of Leigh Brackett’s style is what makes her pop off the page in a way many of her Golden Age contemporaries no longer do.
The two final movies I’d watch at the 2018 Fantasia International Film Festival were both in the big Hall Theatre. It’s perhaps appropriate that the first of those two aspired to be a crowd-pleasing blockbuster. Detective Dee: The Four Heavenly Kings (Di Renjie zhi Sidatianwang, 狄仁杰之四大天王) was directed by veteran Tsui Hark and written by Chang Chialu. It’s nominally a prequel to two other movies, though no knowledge of those films is required. (Before the movie played we saw a…
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On Tuesday, July 31, the first movie I planned to see alongside a general audience was a Hong Kong action movie called The Brink. After that, I’d pass by the screening room before heading home. There’d be only two more days of Fantasia after this one, and I wanted to catch up on things I’d missed in theatres. I was specifically curious about a Korean movie called The Outlaws, about a cop who’s working against the clock to catch a…
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So that’s that. Last night I closed the cover of Soldiers Live (2000), the final volume of Glen Cook’s Black Company series. (Yes, yes, I know there’s a new book, Port of Shadows, coming out this month, but it’s set in the past, before Shadows Linger.) All the Company’s enemies and most of its veterans are laid to rest, mostly in their graves. In the last few pages the Black Company, Last of the Free Companies of Khatovar, leaves one universe…
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Cover by Ilene Meyer C.J. (Carolyn Janice) Cherry was born on September 1, 1942. When she sold her first work, editor Donald A. Wollheim suggested adding the final “h,” making her byline C.J. Cherryh. Her brother is artist David Cherry, who did not add a final “h.” Cherryh won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1977. In 1982, she won the coveted Balrog Award for her short story “A Thief in Korianth.” She has won three…
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