Search Results for: tale covers

Invasion! The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells

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Across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us. One hundred and twenty-five years after its first publication, H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (serialized 1897, published 1898) remains a brutally effective tale of alien invasion and a critique of imperialism. I can’t remember how young I…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Blood-Red and Blind – The Crimson Bat

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The Crimson Bat (Japan, 1969) Here’s a pretty decent samurai series even I wasn’t aware of until recently: the Crimson Bat, four films starring Yoko Matsuyama as the eponymous hero. Moreover, all four movies are now relatively easy to find, available on YouTube with good English subtitles. There aren’t enough chambara movies with female heroes, in my opinion, so I was pleased to discover these — and hopefully, you’ll be pleased as well.

Spider-Societies, Alien Structures, and Grim Wastelands: March/April 2022 Print SF Magazines

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March/April 2022 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, 123RF, and Mondolithic Studios One of the bennies of digital publishing is the luxury of enjoying magazine reviews while the magazines are still on the shelves. I haven’t purchased the March/April F&F yet, for example, but my interest has been sharpened by reviews like this one, by C.D. Lewis at Tangent Online, for Tobi Ogundiran’s “The…

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Neverwhens, Where Fantasy and History Collide: Tanith Lee’s Cyrion

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Cyrion (DAW, 1982, cover by Ken W. Kelly) The Empress of Dreams I hardly need to sing the praises of the late Tanith Lee (1947 – 2015).  A two-time World Fantasy winner, Horror Grandmaster, Hugo nominee, yadda yadda yadda, she rose out of nowhere writing sword & sorcery (generally a male-dominated field) with the Nebula-nominated The Birthgrave, and went on to pen 70 novels, 300 short stories and create a style of lush, dark fantasy perhaps best represented by her…

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Spacefaring Nuns at the Heart of a Galactic Rebellion: Our Lady of Endless Worlds by Lina Rather

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Sisters of the Vast Black and Sisters of the Forsaken Stars (Tor.com, 2019 and 2022). Covers by Drive Communications and Emmanuel Shiu I’m a huge fan of the sprawling space opera sub-genre, but my love is conflicted. All the best — from Peter Hamilton to Ann Leckie, Lois McMaster Bujold to Becky Chambers — comes packaged exclusively as multi-volume epics. If you want to enjoy space opera these days, you need to schedule a 4-week sabbatical first. And a lot of…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: The Barbarian Boom, Part 4

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The Warrior and the Sorceress (Argentina/USA, 1984) Barbarians don’t get no respect. The fantasy films released in the wake of the unexpected worldwide success of Star Wars (1977) were all over the map, varying widely in approach and quality, but the barbarian lookalikes that followed the first Conan movie (1982) stuck to a formula, in quality plunging straight to the bottom of the barrel and mostly staying there as the barrel bumped along the cheapie exploitation circuit for the next…

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New Treasures: Frolic on the Amaranthyn by Chase A. Folmar

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Frolic on the Amaranthyn (Sable Star Press,4/6/2022). Cover art by Goran Gligović Frolic on the Amaranthyn will be published by Sable Star Press on April 6th, 2022. It is 130 pages, priced at$7.99 paperback and $2.99 in digital formats (available soon from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others).  Cover art by Goran Gligović. This post announces the release and previews excerpts. Chase A. Folmar has been demonstrating his command of Weird Fiction, Sword & Sorcery (S&S), and the English language in…

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Vintage Treasures: The Worlds of Fritz Leiber

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The Worlds of Fritz Leiber (Ace, 1976). Cover by Patrick Woodroffe Fritz Leiber died 30 years ago, in 1992, but he’s in no real danger of being forgotten. His Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories remain poplar and are still in print, and so are many of his acclaimed novels and collections. I wish more of his work was readily accessible to modern readers though, like his splendid 1976 collection The Worlds of Fritz Leiber. In his introduction Leiber said “I…

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Future Treasures: Time Troopers edited by Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio

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Time Troopers (Baen, April 5, 2022). Cover by Kieran Yanner It’s a delight to see a brand new anthology from the dynamic duo of Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio. Their previous collaborations (Space Pioneers, Overruled, and Cosmic Corsairs) were a lot of fun — and they even gave a shout out to the readers of Black Gate in the acknowledgments of Cosmic Corsairs for their help selecting the stories. Their newest, Time Troopers, contains new and classic tales of Time…

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A Band of Black Hearted Bastards in a Comic Romp: Articles of Faith by David Wragg

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The Black Hawks and The Righteous (HarperVoyager, October 2019 and September 2021). Covers by Richard Anderson (left) and uncredited I bought David Wragg’s debut fantasy The Black Hawks when it first appeared in 2019. It sounded right up my alley — the tale of a dysfunctional band of mercenaries drafted into a desperate conflict to protect a stranded prince. I was delighted to see a second — and apparently, final — volume appear at the end of last year. The Righteous…

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