Michael Penkas took on the lion’s share of our magazine coverage this month, with in-depth reviews of the latest issues of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Nightmare. Mike joins our current magazine reviewer, Fletcher Vredenburgh (whose beat is primarily sword & sorcery), as well as our Retro-reviewers, Rich Horton and Matthew Wuertz. In other magazine news this month, Rich Horton presented his 2017 Hugo Nomination thoughts, recommending dozens of stories from all of the major magazines. See…
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As we segue (stagger, stumble, reel, crawl, stop-drop-and roll) from winter into spring, we are faced as always with the never-ending question: “What in the world am I going to read next?” Everyone will solve this dilemma in their own way. Dart and ouija boards, animal entrails, tarot cards, various dice systems, and the blind recommendations of pimply, pasty complexioned clerks in chain bookstores have all been resorted to by readers desperate for guidance. For many people (Black Gate followers no…
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Fletcher is no stranger to the readers and fans of Black Gate. His articles and reviews are not only well-written, insightful and entertaining, they are extremely popular, as well. He is the “reviewer extraordinaire,” and his reviews have led me to read many books. I trust his opinion and his taste in what makes for a good novel. Fletcher is also one of the most voracious readers I have ever met; even in my prime, when I was reading about…
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Well, these were my books. You know, the ones that got me forever hooked on fantasy worlds and addicted to stories untethered from the things we know. I was eight, in the second grade, when I began reading them, and they were the first to begin teaching me that precious lifelong lesson: that though you might not trod in Faerie with your flesh-and-bone feet, there are many other pathways thither. It was this shared knowledge that made an eight-year-old American…
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Well, this is a little recursive. As I draft the list of Top Ten BG articles last month, I learn that our most posts in January were… Top Ten lists. That includes Brandon Crilly’s Top Ten Books I Read in 2016, sitting right at the top of the heap, as well as GeekDad‘s Best Tabletop Games of 2016 (at #2), John DeNardo’s Best of the Best: The Definitive List of 2016’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (#3), and even the…
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By Thomas Barczak This is an excerpt from Mouth of the Dragon by Thomas Barczak, presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Perseid Press, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Mouth of the Dragon: Prophecy of the Evarun is available in trade paper and digital editions at Amazon, and wherever quality books are sold. We join the tale of Chaelus, vessel of the Giver reborn, in progress, as he begins…
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My Fantasy Writing Workshop (Columbia College Chicago) starts each semester by writing a shared private encyclopedia of genre tropes. Each week has an assigned category. The categories are: monsters or magical creatures; gods, demi-gods, or powerful spirits; magical artifacts or prophetic techniques/devices; and historical people. The students each write one entry per category, then the following week, all the entries in that category are part of their assigned reading. For each category, I’ve compiled a list of at least fifty…
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My introduction to Lawrence Watt-Evans was his brilliant short story “Why I Left Harry’s All-Night Hamburgers” which originally appeared in the July 1987 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, and which I read in his 1992 collection Crosstime Traffic. It won the Hugo Award for best story of the year. And while the overall tone of the tale is downbeat, even melancholic, it is hands-down one of the most optimistic and life-affirming short stories I’ve read in any genre. Check it…
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A lot of exciting changes in the magazine industry this month. Let’s start with the bad news: Warren Lapine’s Fantastic Stories of the Imagination closed up shop. The Good News? We added two brand new magazines to our tracking list: Obadiah Baird’s sharply designed The Audient Void, and the stellar first issue of Occult Detective Quarterly, edited by Sam Gafford and John Linwood Grant. Fans of vintage magazines had lots of fun material to choose from this month. Rich Horton…
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Welcome to the first short story roundup of 2017. While I won’t neglect the past month’s heroic fantasy, there’s been an explosion of new magazines, and I think John O’Neill sent me copies of all of them. So, next to Swords and Sorcery Magazine (which I woefully neglected for the past two roundups), there is the cool, old-school-looking The Audient Void, and the magnificently-produced Occult Detective Quarterly. Issue 60 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine marks the completion of five years of continuous…
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