To help reveal the muses that inspire weird fiction and horror writers, this interview series engages contemporary authors on the theme of “Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction.” Recent guests on Black Gate broaching this topic have included Darrell Schweitzer, Sebastian Jones, Charles Gramlich, Anna Smith Spark, & Carol Berg, Stephen Leigh, Jason Ray Carney. See the full list of interviews at the end of this post. Today we corner John C. Hocking whose Conan pastiche we reviewed a few months ago. John C. Hocking is…
Read More Read More
Stephen Leigh is a Cincinnati-based, award-winning writer of science fiction and fantasy, with thirty novels and nearly sixty short stories published. He has also published fantasy under the pseudonym S.L. Farrell. He has been a frequent contributor to the Hugo-nominated shared-world series Wild Cards, edited by George R.R. Martin. Stephen taught creative writing for twenty years at Northern Kentucky University, and has recently retired (but not from writing). His most recent novels have been Amid The Crowd Of Stars, the SunPath duology of A Fading…
Read More Read More
Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction It is not intuitive to seek beauty in art deemed grotesque/weird, but most authors who produce horror/fantasy actually are usually (a) serious about their craft, and (b) driven by strange muses. To help reveal divine mysteries passed through artists, this interview series engages contemporary authors on the theme of “Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction.” Recent guests on Black Gate have included Darrell Schweitzer, Sebastian Jones, Charles Gramlich, Anna Smith Spark, & Carol Berg. See the full list of interviews at…
Read More Read More
By Janet Morris and Chris Morris This is an excerpt from Tempus Unbound, by Janet Morris and Chris Morris, presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Janet Morris and Chris Morris, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Tempus Unbound is available in hardcover, trade paper; and in Kindle, Nook, and other electronic formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, I Tunes and other booksellers. Chapter 17: Hunters From the Future Something scrambled…
Read More Read More
By Janet Morris and Chris Morris This is an excerpt from The Sacred Band, by Janet Morris and Chris Morris, presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Janet Morris and Chris Morris, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. The Sacred Band is available in hardcover, trade paper; and in Kindle, Nook, and other electronic formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, I Tunes and other booksellers. Shock Troops of the Gods…
Read More Read More
The World of Tiers, Volumes 1 and 2 (Science Fiction Book Club, November 1981). Covers by Boris Vallejo Philip Jose Farmer (1918 – 2009). Farmer was a versatile writer. I discovered him from his Sword & Planet work with his World of Tiers series, but went on to read a lot of other books by him, including some pastiches he wrote in ERB’s universe. I’ll be discussing him here in two posts. My introduction to Farmer came through the Science…
Read More Read More
It’s a week off from A (Black) Gat in the Hand, as I am currently reading Pulp, but except for the constant revisiting of Norbert Davis’ Max Latin, I’m not listening to it (though The Continental Op is on tap). I am constantly listening to audiobooks. I’m fortunate that my mind can multi-task, and I listen to them while driving, working, writing, when I go to sleep at night. It lets me get to things I wouldn’t have time to…
Read More Read More
Monsters in Hell just released this May 2024 (Kindle and Paperback editions published by Perseid Press). Hell is a real place. Anyone who has broken a commandment winds up there. That’s pretty much everybody. Satan is the boss. You’re okay until you’re not. But never fear, all your friends are here. As well as everyone you’ve ever heard of. You are not alone and the party is in full swing. However, keep in mind: our Hell is unlike any other. Picking…
Read More Read More
The November 1958 and May 1961 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Covers by John Pederson and Ed Emshwiller I’ve recently looked at a few issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from the early to mid-50s, when Anthony Boucher (at first in collaboration with J. Francis McComas) was the editor. Boucher left that post with the August 1958 issue, and Robert P. Mills took over. (Mills had been the editor of F&SF’s sister magazine…
Read More Read More
I’ve done three shelfies posts. If you missed those (shame on you!), I’ve been posting shelfies, with comments on some of the books, over in a bookshelf subreddit. With over 2,000 physical books, I’ve got a lot of shelves. And to me, if you’re talking about a shared universe, you gotta start out with Thieves World. I own a (non-RPG/comics) almost complete library; including one few folks know about, let alone have. THIEVES WORLD The first Thieves World book came…
Read More Read More