Black Gate – Page 427 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Experience a Darkly Gripping Vision of the Future with the San Angeles Trilogy by Gerald Brandt

Friday, March 2, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Every time a trilogy completes, we bake a cake at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters.

Today’s cake is in honor of Gerald Brandt’s San Angeles series. It opened with The Courier, which the B&N Sci-fi Fantasy Blog called “a darkly gripping vision of the future.” It was published in hardcover by DAW in March 2016. Here’s the description.

The first installment in the San Angeles trilogy, a thrilling near-future cyberpunk sci-fi series

Kris Ballard is a motorcycle courier. A nobody. Level 2 trash in a multi-level city that stretches from San Francisco to the Mexican border — a land where corporations make all the rules. A runaway since the age of fourteen, Kris struggled to set up her life, barely scraping by, working hard to make it without anyone’s help.

But a late day delivery changes everything when she walks in on the murder of one of her clients. Now she’s stuck with a mysterious package that everyone wants. It looks like the corporations want Kris gone, and are willing to go to almost any length to make it happen.

Hunted, scared, and alone, she retreats to the only place she knows she can hide: the Level 1 streets. Fleeing from people that seem to know her every move, she is rescued by Miller — a member of an underground resistance group — only to be pulled deeper into a world she doesn’t understand.

Together Kris and Miller barely manage to stay one step ahead of the corporate killers, but it’s only a matter of time until Miller’s resources and their luck run out….

The Rebel, the third and final volume, arrived in hardcover November 14.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Ann Leckie’s “The Unknown God”

Friday, March 2, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 3 comments

Ann Leckie was born on March 2, 1966. Her first novel Ancillary Justice was published in 2013 and not only opened her Imperial Radch series, but won the Hugo, Nebula, Clarke, British Fantasy, British SF, Seiun, and Kitschie Awards. The second book in the series, Ancillary Sword, also won the British SF Association Award. While Ancillary Justice won the Locus Poll for Best first novel, the other two books in the series won the Locus Poll for Best SF novel. Leckie also served as the editor for the magazine Gigantosaurus from 2010-2014.

“The Unknown God” appeared in the February 2010 issue of Realms of Fantasy, purchased by Shawna McCarthy. It is related to her God of Au series of stories and was reprinted in January-February 2017 issue of Uncanny Magazine.

Awolo is the God of Horses, living for the past year as a human being in “The Unknown God.” Having fallen in love with the human Saest,who spurned him, Awolo cursed her and left her for dead. Leaving the city, he decided to see how the other half lives, going so far as to live among a group of atheists for a while.

On his return to the city, Awolo discovers that Saest has survived the intervening year, although she is still bound by his curse. Joining up with the merchant Nes Imosa, who doesn’t fully realize Awolo is the god, not just named for him, they go to seek Saest and remove the curse.

Leckie’s story depicts an intriguing culture with a complex and unique understand of the gods who inhabit it. While she doesn’t fully delve into the divine structure of the world (which is also featured in her stories “The God of Au,” “Marsh Gods,” and “The Nalendar”), but clearly knows the background of her world, so while it feels like she isn’t revealing everything, it does not feel underdeveloped, but rather leaves the reader wanting more.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Reality Really Does Bite… Apparently

Thursday, March 1, 2018 Sue Granquist Comments 2 comments

Given my avocation it probably comes as no surprise that for a time I never missed an episode of the Travel Channel show Ghost Adventures. The hand-held-camera “reality” series follows paranormal investigator Zach Bagans and a small crew as they spend the night in various locations around the globe which are reportedly haunted.

By any series standards, Ghost Adventures has had an amazing run since premiering in 2008. Allegations that Bagans and crew play loose with the facts, and emphasizes showmanship over hardcore research is a bit of a non-sequitur considering the subject matter. But somewhere around 2013 the productions values as well as the dramatic, over-acting went too far and for me at least, the show lost its gritty fun. Then in 2014 a member of the original crew, Aaron Goodwin went on record telling the us all the shocking news that the Travel Channel faked most of the paranormal activity documented on the show. At that point my willingness to suspend my disbelief had been stretched to the breaking point and I was done. However, here we are in 2018 and Ghost Adventures just aired their 182^nd episode in January, with new episodes coming in March.

So, color me shocked that it took ten years, but I’m here to tell you about the inevitable – a Ghost Adventures movie.

…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Quietus by Tristan Palmgren

Thursday, March 1, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Tristan Palmgren is a Missouri writer; his ambitious debut novel Quietus arrives from Angry Robot next week. Una McCormack calls it “A truly outstanding debut… Palmgren takes the staples of science fiction – post-apocalypse, first contact, interventionism – and integrates them seamlessly, breathing new life into familiar forms.” Here’s the description.

A transdimensional anthropologist can’t keep herself from interfering with Earth’s darkest period of history in this brilliant science fiction debut

Niccolucio, a young Florentine Carthusian monk, leads a devout life until the Black Death kills all of his brothers, leaving him alone and filled with doubt. Habidah, an anthropologist from another universe racked by plague, is overwhelmed by the suffering. Unable to maintain her observer neutrality, she saves Niccolucio from the brink of death.

Habidah discovers that neither her home’s plague nor her assignment on Niccolucio’s world are as she’s been led to believe. Suddenly the pair are drawn into a worlds-spanning conspiracy to topple an empire larger than the human imagination can contain.

As interesting as all that is, I’m more fascinated by this snippet from an interview with Palmgren at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog:

Every time we read history, we change it. We bring our biases and myopias. If we’re honest, we can be aware of them. (And if we’re naive, we can convince ourselves that we’ve found all of them, or that being aware means we escaped them.)

Quietus embraces the observer. It’s about the paradox of being an observer – the biases we bring to history, the urge to touch…. Every time we read history, we bring ourselves to it like we bring ourselves to everything else we read. Our perspective lurks between the lines. Quietus, as does other science fiction and fantasy about history, takes the observer out of the hidden space and into the text. We confront ourselves as observers, and see what we bring without intending to. And by using the freedom of fantasy to play with the facts of the past, I want to make that past feel like the present.

Quietus will be published by Angry Robot on March 6, 2018. It is 464 pages, priced at $12.99 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Dominic Harman. A sequel, Terminus, is already scheduled for November 6, 2018.

Birthday Reviews: Wyman Guin’s “Trigger Tide”

Thursday, March 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 5 comments

Wyman Guin was born on March 1, 1915 and died on February 19, 1989. Guin only published seven stories and one novel, The Standing Joy during his career. His most famous stories may have been “Beyond Bedlam” and “Volpla,” the latter of which was adapted for the radio show X Minus 1 in August 1957. Guin was declared the winner of the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award in 2013.

Guin’s first story was “Trigger Tide.” When it was first published in Astounding in October 1950, edited by John W. Campbell Jr., it appeared under the pseudonym Norman Menasco, although Guin reverted to his own name for his second story, “Beyond Bedlam.”

The story was reprinted by Groff Conklin in Omnibus of Science Fiction and was included in his collection Living Way Out (a.k.a. Beyond Bedlam). It was again reprinted in The World Turned Upside Down, edited by Eric Flint, David Drake, and Jim Baen.

Guin’s story is about an agent on a distant planet who is trying to assassinate a fascist leader, a task assigned to earlier agents who have failed. When the story opens, he is lying, beaten, on a shelf of quartzcar near the beach and must try to get away from the shore before the tide comes in.

The setting is the most intriguing part of the story. The world is made up of archipelagos of quartzcar. The crystalline structure of the material means that any landmass above the water line is a series of shelves. In addition, the five moons orbiting the planet caused a wide variation of tides. Furthermore, the tides wreaked havoc with the piezoelectrical currents inherent in the quartz.

The impact of this strange situation is felt at the climax of the story, which doesn’t feel like a deus ex machina only because the story feels like it is a set up to exploit the strange parameters of the world.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: Tim Powers’s “Through and Through”

Thursday, March 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

While 2018 isn’t a leap year, that doesn’t stop us from celebrating authors with that very particular birthday.

Tim Powers was born on February 29, 1952. Other authors who were born on leap day include Patricia McKillip, Howard Tayler, and Sharon Webb. Powers has frequently collaborated with James P. Blaylock, occasionally using the joint pseudonym William Ashbless, which is not only a pseudonym, but a poet both authors have referred to in their works.

Powers has won the Philip K. Dick Award for his novels The Anubis Gates and Dinner at Deviant’s Palace. His novels Last Call and Declare have won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and he won the Collection award for The Bible Repairman and Other Stories. Anubis Gates also won the Prix Apollo and Geffen Award, Declare earned Powers an International Horror Guild Award, and The Stress of Her Regard won a Mythopoeic Award and Ignotus Award. A translation of the story “A Soul in a Bottle” won the Xatafi-Cyberdark Award. In 2014, LASFS recognized Powers with the Forry Award.

In 2003, Subterranean Press published an anthology by Tim Powers and James P. Blaylock called The Devils in the Details, which contained a story by each author and a collaborative effort. Powers contributed “Through and Through.” The story was included in his collection Strange Itineraries and again in Down and Out in Purgatory: The Collected Stories of Tim Powers.

“Through and Through” tells the tale of a priest doing a stint in the Confessional shortly after a woman committed suicide in his church. He had received her confession, but was unable to give her absolution. A week after her funeral, she returns to receive the penance he refused her the first time.

In other hands, the priest might have suffered from a crisis of faith, however Powers priest is grounded in the secular world, while easily accepting that the woman’s ghost can be in the confession. At the same time, he is trying to balance the changes that have been introduced to the traditional priesthood and sacraments he embraces, and those the Church is currently promoting.

…

Read More Read More

Birthday Reviews: February Index

Thursday, March 1, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Asimovs-Science-Fiction-April-May-2007-small

January index

At the one sixth mark in our journey through the year, here’s a look back at the birthday reviews that appeared at Black Gate in February.

February 1, Yevgeny Zamyatin: “The Cave”
February 2, Selina Rosen: “Food Quart”
February 3, Alex Bledsoe: “Shall We Gather ”
February 4, Neal Asher: “Owner Space”
February 5, Joseph H. Delaney: “Survival Course”
February 6, Eric Flint: “Portraits”
February 7, Karen Joy Fowler: “Always”
February 8, Mary Robinette Kowal: “Just Right”

…

Read More Read More

Andrew Liptak on 18 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Read in February

Wednesday, February 28, 2018 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Echoes of Understorey by Thoraiya Dyer-small

Andrew Liptak’s February book selections give you a nice opportunity to be an armchair tourist in some pretty exotic locales (“Visit distant planets, conspiracies, and galactic conflicts!”)

Just as important for diligent book fans, Andrew catches us up with some of the more intriguing ongoing fantasy series. So without further ado, let’s see what he has for us this month.

Tarnished City by Vic James ( Del Rey, 416 pages, $25 in hardcover/$10.99 digital, February 6, 2018)

Vic James began her career last year with The Gilded Cage, in which the world belongs to a class of gifted magical aristocrats. In the next installment of her Dark Gifts trilogy, an uprising has been crushed, and protagonist Abi Hadley’s brother Luke has been framed for the murder of Parliament’s Chancellor Zelston. She goes into hiding, and after her brother is condemned to a remote estate, she hatches a plan to save him. Publisher’s Weekly says that readers will “appreciate the multifaceted complexity of James’s world and its lively, determined characters.”

We covered the opening volume, Gilded Cage, back in April.

…

Read More Read More

Greco-Roman Treasures in the Egyptian Museum

Wednesday, February 28, 2018 Sean McLachlan Comments 0 Comment

20171211_143050

Mummy portrait from the 2nd century AD
of two brothers who appear to have died together

The Egyptian Museum in Cairo is an addictive place. On my two writing retreats in Egypt last year I found myself returning again and again. The collections are so vast, the displays so stunning, that no matter how many times you go you always find something that bowls you over.

Much of the museum is laid out chronologically, from the predynastic era all the way up to the Greco-Roman period (332 BC – 395 AD). This last period of ancient Egypt is often overlooked except for the famous mummy portraits like the one pictured above, lifelike paintings of the deceased. The rest of the art from this time is less compelling. Some of it is overdone, almost cartoonish, but that doesn’t make it any less interesting. Here’s a small sample of what the museum had to offer.

I apologize for the quality of some of these photos. The Egyptian Museum is poorly lit and many of the cases are dirty, making good photography difficult. Hope you enjoy them anyway!

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Dark is the Sun by Philip Jose Farmer

Wednesday, February 28, 2018 John ONeill Comments 11 comments

Dark is the Sun Philip Jose Farmer-small

Dark is the Sun Philip Jose Farmer-back-small

The first Philip Jose Farmer book I ever read was To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971), the Hugo-Award winning first novel in his famous Riverworld series. Today he’s just as well known for his World of Tiers, Dayworld, and Tarzan novels, among many other other popular series. Farmer was famously prolific, and he kept at it right until the very end, when he died in 2009 at the age of 91.

I have more than a few Philip Jose Farmer books in my to-be-read pile. But the oldest, way down in the stratified layers near the floor, I bought back in 1980 . Dark is the Sun, one of his lesser known novels, is a far-future science fiction tale that reads like epic fantasy, and the classic Darrell K. Sweet cover certainly reinforced that. There are witches, thieves, gigantic walking skeletons, mobile plants, magic eggs, haunted jungles, and the threat of a collapsing universe… if you wanted to market a novel to a million young D&D players in the early 80s, you could have done a lot worse.

Dark is the Sun reminds me of Jack Vance’s Dying Earth, with its fifteen-billion-years hence setting; the 1982 British paperback edition from Panther, to my mind, rather resembled Brian Aldiss’ far-future classic Hothouse (see below).

…

Read More Read More