Search Results for: tale covers

A Modest Little Magazine: Whispers edited by Stuart David Schiff

Comments 11 comments

Assorted issues of Whispers, 1973-87. Issues #1, 2, 4, 9, 13-14, 15-17, 17-18, 19-20, and the final issue, 23-24.Covers by Tim Kirk (1,3), Stephen Fabian (2,9,13-24,23-24), John Stewart (13-15,16-17), and Kevin Eugene Johnson (19-20) When I started Black Gate magazine, I drew inspiration from small press magazines of the 70s, 80s and 90s that I deeply admired. It was a a fairly short list, but it included W. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook, the Terminus Weird Tales edited by George H. Scithers,…

Read More Read More

Step into a World of RuneQuest Adventure with The Smoking Ruin and The Pegasus Plateau

Comments 6 comments

Cover art by Andrey Fetisov Maybe it’s because I’ve only recently started paying close attention, but it seems to me that the RuneQuest RPG has been experiencing something of a renaissance since returning to the fold at Chaosium. Certainly there’s been a flurry of attention-grabbing new releases anyway, including the epic and original Red Cow campaign, the tale of a small clan’s desperate battle for freedom against the oppressive Lunar Empire, a tribe of werewolves, and even darker threats; the…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Call of the Bone Ships, Book 2 of The Tide Child Trilogy by RJ Barker

Comments 0 Comment

The Bone Ships (Orbit, 2019) and Call of the Bone Ships (Orbit, 2020). Covers by Edward Bettison RJ Barker’s The Bone Ships was published by Orbit in 2019, to strong reviews. Spectrum Culture called it “A thrilling bit of high seas fantasy… from a tremendously talented and imaginative mind,” BookPage said it’s “the perfect adventure for anyone who’s ever had dreams of the sea,” and it was nominated for the Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel. But my favorite…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Stormbreak, Book 3 of the Seafire Trilogy by Natalie C. Parker (Author)

Comments 2 comments

The Seafire trilogy (Razorbill, 2018-21). Covers by Billelis and Cliff Nielsen You know the rule about trilogies at Black Gate. Every time one wraps up, we bake a cake. Stormbreak, the third novel in Natalie C. Parker’s Seafire series, arrives early next month from Razorbill, and the interns are already warming up the oven. What’s Seafire all about? Pirates!! Girl pirates of the far future, actually, which is intensely cool. My favorite notice comes from Feliza Casano over at Tor.com,…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: In 2021, The “Stakes” Get Higher…

Comments 5 comments

No surprise, I absolutely love a good vampire story. And though I’ve had a bit of an up and down relationship with Stephen King over the years, one of the “up” periods involved his book Salem’s Lot. During the year-end holidays I reread it, followed by a revisiting of the 1979 TV miniseries starring David Soul and directed by Tobe Hooper. Though it had its moments, not the least of which being the vampires themselves, I’ve always felt a little…

Read More Read More

Monsters, Magic, and Kung fu: The Daoshi Chronicles by M. H. Boroson

Comments 2 comments

The Daoshi Chronicles, published in paperback by Talos Press. Covers by Jeff Chapman I discovered M. H. Boroson’s delightful Daoshi Chronicles when Sarah Avery reviewed the opening novel The Girl With Ghost Eyes here at Black Gate five years ago, saying in part: We’re connoisseurs of kickass combat scenes, eldritch lore, and victories won at terrible, unpredictable price. We want our heroes unabashedly heroic and morally complicated at the same time. Add a decade or more of research on the author’s…

Read More Read More

Uncanny X-Men, Part 26: Introducing Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost and Launching the Dark Phoenix Saga in 1979!

Comments 2 comments

Well, if you’ve been waiting for my epic reread of the Uncanny X-Men to reach one of the most consequential and memorable stories in comic history, your waiting has paid off. It only took 26 blog posts, but we’ve arrived at the beginning of the Dark Phoenix Saga. This arc of the Dark Phoenix Saga, from issue #129 to #131 does some major things. First, it introduces a mutant who will over the course of the coming decades become a…

Read More Read More

A Fine Addition to any SF Library: Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

Comments 15 comments

Tin Stars (Signet, 1986), volume 5 of Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction. Cover by JAV Isaac Asimov published more than 500 books in his lifetime. Now Asimov was amazingly productive — averaging around 1,700 words published per day over the last two decades of his life — but no one is that prolific. In later years he became a proficient book packager, working with editors like Charles G. Waugh and especially Martin H. Greenberg to churn out dozens…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: Remote Control by Nnedi Okorafor

Comments 0 Comment

Nnedi Okorafor has won every major award our small field has to offer. She won a Hugo and Nebula Award for her Tor.com novella Binti, a World Fantasy Award for Who Fears Death, a Locus Award for Akata Warrior, an Eisner Award and another Hugo Award for the comic LaGuardia — and a great many more, including a Black Excellence Award, Kindred Award, Lodestar Award, and awards I’ve never even heard of. I hear that when she steps outside to…

Read More Read More

The Heroes Gather at Last: The Maradaine Elite Trilogy by Marshall Ryan Maresca

Comments 0 Comment

The Maradaine Elite trilogy by Marshall Ryan Maresca (DAW Books). Covers by Paul Young Marshall Ryan Maresca is one of the most ambitious fantasy authors to burst on he scene in the last decade. His masterwork is the Maradaine Saga: four parallel trilogies, each with a separate cast and very different tone, all set amid the bustling streets and crime-ridden districts of the exotic port city of Maradaine. It kicked off in 2015 with his debut novel The Thorn of…

Read More Read More