Hello, Readers!
It’s 2024 already. How? How did that happen?!
Like many of you (I suspect), I’ve added ‘read more’ to my goals for this year. I try not to make resolutions, but rather goals. It feels a little less pushy and more gentle. You still have something to strive for, but it somehow feels less harsh. Anyway, I have very limited time, so reading so often finds itself on the back burner.
Happy 2024! Let’s kick butt for another year. Or at least, limp to the finish in 52 weeks. I take what I can get.
One of my greatest talents as a blogger, is finding folks more talented than I, to write my weekly column for me. Hey – the reader gets a better end product, so they win, right? I brought Talking Tolkien to Black Gate in 2023. And I had some great help yet again for A (Black) Gat in the Hand.
So some of you Black Gaters may be surprised that I occasionally actually write my own essays for the Monday morning slot. John O’Neill is too savvy an editor for me to completely fool him for almost ten years.
So here are what I thought were ten of my better efforts in 2023. Hopefully you saw them back when I first posted them. But if not, maybe you’ll check out a few now. Ranking them seemed a bit egotistical, so they’re in chronological order. Let’s go!
If I do say so myself, things absolutely started off strong, the second day of the new year! Black Gate has a bunch of Douglas Adams fans. This was my eighth Adams-related post, and I included links to five prior posts by Black Gaters (Steven H Silver, and M. Harold Page).
Thirteen posts about Douglas Adams. SURELY you can find something interesting. This current post included me fooling around with a new entry for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I think it’s pretty funny. And if you’re not familiar with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, that’s actually my favorite Adams book. Click on this one and get a larf.
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #58 hit the electronic shelves on November 26th. We’ve got three stories and three poems — a full complement!
“Dragon Tears Part II,” by Caleb Williams. Exiled sorcerer-scribe Larohd du Masiim continues his quest to gather the rare artifacts needed to gain back his lost love, the princess Yadira. Catch up with Part I here.
“Isle of the Thousand-Eyed Strangler,” by R. A. Quiogue. Quiogue returns to our pages with a tale of fantasy south-seas derring-do among the Perfumed Isles. Young prince Pandara, driven to piracy after the Wulongan Empire has laid waste to his home island, becomes embroiled with the last surviving priestess of a cult of the mythical sunken land of Sundramala.
“The Third Way,” by Darrell Schweitzer. A classic reprint! Grion, the faithful servant of the great warrior Mazantes, flees with his master, along with anyone else who can, from the implacable wrath of Garadis and his army of monsters. But their flight takes them to strange otherworlds where they hope to make a most desperate gamble.
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Moderan, by David R. Bunch (Avon, May 1971). Cover by Norman Adams
The week between Christmas and New Year’s may be my favorite time of the year. Nobody’s working. Life slows down. Everybody’s eating cheese. And I can finally kick back and tackle the reading projects I’ve wanted to get to all year.
At the top of my list is a Moderan, a classic science fiction collection that reviewers at Black Gate have referenced countless times in the past few years — most recently Rich Horton, who wrote here back in February, “Bunch of course is best known for his remarkable Moderan stories, many or most of which were published in Cele Goldsmith Lalli’s Amazing and Fantastic.”
Rich knows how to pique my interest. Start with superlatives, then name drop a bunch of old science fiction magazines.
Warrior of Llarn and Thief of Llarn by Gardner F. Fox (Ace Books,
1964 and 1966). Covers by Frank Frazetta and Gray Morrow
I discovered Thief of Llarn in my small hometown library. The swordsman on the cover screamed John Carter to me, and the demon skull with the gem in it didn’t hurt any.
I fell in love with this book and finally found a copy for myself. It’s not in great shape. It took me another fifteen years (pre-internet) or so to find Warrior of Llarn, which was actually the first book of the two book series.
I was somewhat disappointed in Warrior, probably because Thief had become almost mythically good to me in my memories. These are solid entries in Sword & Planet fiction. They were published in 1964 and 1966 respectively.
JRF has deep roots in the weird fiction community and especially Black Gate, and you can learn about those in this post. We recently reviewed his collections Darker than Weird and Worlds Beyond Worlds which were published after I interviewed the author in 2017 for my Weird Beauty interviews series (right before Black Gate began hosting them; see the listing of those interviews below).
This reposts that interview and teases an updated one specific to Fultz’s Zang Cycle (to be posted in the coming weeks as The Rogues in the House Podcast, publishers of the Sword & Sorcery anthologies A Book of Blades Vol I and Vol II relaunches The Revelations of Zang collection). I was honored to write the foreword for the re-release. When preparing that I interviewed John R. Fultz a second time, but focusing on the Zang Cycle. Sharing the announcements for the re-release begs to have the 2017 version detailing his creative process and the history of SKULLS available here. Enjoy this prelude and keep an eye out for the announcement.
The Mask of Zorro (USA, 1998)
Swashbucklers come in many forms and from many cultures, settling differences with their wicked nemeses with long blades of many shapes. Some leap aboard slashing with cutlasses; some coolly assume their stances with katanas at the ready, in one hand or two; some gallop to the charge, sabers waving; some wait for their attackers with claymores held high.
But I put it to you that there is no more iconic weapon for a swashbuckler to wield than the rapier. It’s a finesse weapon that relies as much on dexterity as strength, relatively light despite its three-foot blade, encouraging movement and rapid footwork. It hangs easily at the waist, from belt or baldric, an accent that adds martial flair to every bold outfit, and it looks as good on a woman as it does on a man. And crucially, it has a point but no edge, so it’s no battlefield weapon — its only function is to settle personal conflicts between antagonists with precision, by means of a thrust to wound or to kill.
The rapier is the weapon of choice of the heroes in all three of the movies from the late ‘90s we’re considering this time around: in the global hit that should have been a flop, in the critical darling that should have been a hit, and in the triumph that was both. Keep your knees flexed, your wrist loose, and don’t grip the hilt too tightly.
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Orbit 6, edited by Damon Knight (Berkley Medallion, June 1970). Cover by Paul Lehr
“No more stories.” So ends Joanna Russ’s great novelette “The Second Inquisition.” But in many ways the story is about stories — about how we use them to define ourselves, protect ourselves, understand ourselves. It’s also, in a curious way, about Joanna Russ’s stories, particularly those about Alyx, a woman rescued from drowning in classical times by the future Trans-Temporal Authority.
“The Second Inquisition” first appeared in Orbit 6 in 1970. It was nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette. It was included in the anthology Nebula Award Stories 6, along with Gene Wolfe’s “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories,” which first appeared in Orbit 7 and was also nominated for a Nebula — and which has some resonances with “The Second Inquisition.” Russ’s story has been anthologized several times since, and is collected in her book The Adventures of Alyx, and in the recently released Library of America collection Joanna Russ: Novels and Stories.
It’s been another trying year at Black Gate. In early January we had a serious site outage (caused by poor backup management that built up 900 Gig of site backups); in February we realized our WordPress package couldn’t handle any more growth, and upgraded to a (much more expensive) dedicated server; and just four days ago we suffered a malware attack that rendered the entire site inoperable for 48 hours (traced back to an obsolete WordPress plugin).
It’s things like this that make me question why we still maintain the site. After 24 years of continuous operation, maybe it’s time to declare success, close up the Black Gate offices, and retire.
We’re not going to do that. There are lots of reasons, of course. Over the years we’ve achieved the kind of success I never dreamed of, surpassing two million pages views a month at our peak. But I’ve learned that true success isn’t captured in traffic metrics. The most rewarding part of running this site — by far — has been the amazing things our readers have taught me. It’s been in the surprising and endless ways this little website has enriched my life, by introducing me to so many wonderful folks who share my love of reading, and fantasy.
Happy Christmas and Merry Holidays!! Whatever works for you, let’s be a little kinder to our fellow humans. This world needs it more than ever. Yeesh.
I really do need to get back to doing a ‘Year-End at Black Gate World Headquarters’ post. The one I completed may be my all-time favorite BG post (which I’ve written). I’ve started two others, but they petered off.
I talked about Fortnite last week, which I really enjoy playing with my son. I’m good – he’s excellent.
Wanted to talk about a couple other games I played this year. I spent more hours on Elder Scrolls Online than anything else. I got burned out and am taking a long break, but it’s easily my favorite MMO, supplanting Age of Conan, with Lord of the Rings Online the other one I really like. All three have terrific lore, but ESO’s game play, and graphics, stand above.
Here are a couple others that might appeal to the Black Gate crowd.
Merry Christmas!! I really do need to get back to doing a ‘Year-End at Black Gate World Headquarters’ post. The one I completed may be my all-time favorite BG post (which I’ve written). I’ve started two others, but they petered off.
I talked about Fortnite last week, which I really enjoy playing with my son. I’m good – he’s excellent.