Black Gate – Page 463 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Beneath Ceaseless Skies 239 Now Available

Tuesday, November 21, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The latest issue of Scott Andrew’s Beneath Ceaseless Skies has new fiction from Adam-Troy Castro & Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, and Michael Anthony Ashley, plus an Audio Fiction Podcast, and a reprint by Catherynne M. Valente. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

“The Mouth of the Oyster,” Adam-Troy Castro & Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

Sometimes we treated our anger as a polished jewel, too precious to be set aside. I retained mine for many long seconds before seeing it as a burden and letting it slip, unmourned, into the peace of the fine day. The last of it expressed itself with a grumpy, “For a man who makes eyes, you certainly have much to learn about the blind.”

“Woe and Other Remedies,” Michael Anthony Ashley

On rang the bells, and the guests, as if released from fetters, dispersed to take their seats. And here we are, Gama III thought. The table was full, the moment at hand. Anticipation moved as a wild fondle from seat to seat, bowel to bowel, quivers begetting moans and hoarse whispers, emotion stretching jaws with violence.

Audio Fiction Podcast: “The Mouth of the Oyster,” Adam-Troy Castro & Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

And with that I gave up so many things, so many golden sunrises and so many lingering sunsets.

From the Archives: “The Limitless Perspective of Master Peek, or, the Luminescence of Debauchery,” Catherynne M. Valente

For the sake of the beautiful Dogaressa, I took up my father’s battered old pipe and punty.

Read issue 239 online completely free here.

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New Treasures: A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne

Tuesday, November 21, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Kevin Hearne is the author of the New York Times bestselling Iron Druid Chronicles, as well as the Star Wars novel Heir to the Jedi. His latest, A Plague of Giants, kicks off a brand new fantasy series with an intriguing mythology — complete with shape-shifting bards, fire-wielding giants, and children who can speak to strange beasts.

MOTHER AND WARRIOR
Tallynd is a soldier who has already survived her toughest battle: losing her husband. But now she finds herself on the front lines of an invasion of giants, intent on wiping out the entire kingdom, including Tallynd’s two sons — all that she has left. The stakes have never been higher. If Tallynd fails, her boys may never become men.

SCHOLAR AND SPY
Dervan is an historian who longs for a simple, quiet life. But he’s drawn into intrigue when he’s hired to record the tales of a mysterious bard who may be a spy or even an assassin for a rival kingdom. As the bard shares his fantastical stories, Dervan makes a shocking discovery: He may have a connection to the tales, one that will bring his own secrets to light.

REBEL AND HERO
Abhi’s family have always been hunters, but Abhi wants to choose a different life for himself. Embarking on a journey of self-discovery, Abhi soon learns that his destiny is far greater than he imagined: a powerful new magic thrust upon him may hold the key to defeating the giants once and for all — if it doesn’t destroy him first.

Set in a magical world of terror and wonder, this novel is a deeply felt epic of courage and war, in which the fates of these characters intertwine — and where ordinary people become heroes, and their lives become legend.

A Plague of Giants was published by Del Rey on October 17, 2017. It is 640 pages, priced at $28.99 in hardcover and $14.99 in digital formats. The eye-catching jacket design and illustration is by David G. Stevenson.

The Road of Azrael by Robert E. Howard

Tuesday, November 21, 2017 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 5 comments

I can remember when my dad brought home The Road of Azrael (1979) and Sowers of the Thunder (1980), collections of Robert E. Howard’s historical adventure tales. My reading tastes were so exclusively fantasy and science fiction then, I couldn’t imagine wasting any time on boring, mundane stories. No wizards, no demons? What the heck was anybody thinking?

I grew out of that attitude a few years later and read both volumes. I remember liking them, but if you asked me for details on either one, I couldn’t have told you a thing. I read them once and never again. In fact, until recently I hadn’t read any other historical adventure even though, theoretically at least, I was a fan. I mean, it’s one of the primary root sources of swords & sorcery. At a very basic level, Robert E. Howard took the historical adventures of writers like Harold Lamb and Talbot Mundy and added magic and monsters.

It wasn’t until I started blogging about swords & sorcery and started getting all sorts of recommendations for the stuff that I looked into the genre again. With my review of Henry Treece’s The Great Captains four years ago, I started including some novels in my writing for Black Gate. I’ve been including a taste every month or so (most recently Purity of Blood by Arturo Pérez-Reverte), and it’s gone over well.

One of the pledges I made to myself at the start of my Black Gate tenure four years ago, was to avoid the big names of swords & sorcery. No one, I felt, needed another article about Michael Moorcock, or Fritz Leiber, or especially Robert E. Howard. Considering I wrote about Karl Edward Wagner’s Night Winds for my very first full review, THAT promise didn’t last very long, but I have tried to keep my focus on lesser-known or forgotten authors in my reviews of older works. Since then, I’ve reviewed a Moorcock book, a new one by Charles Saunders, and several more Wagner books, but until now I’ve steered clear of REH (especially because Bob Byrne has done a terrific job writing about him here at BG in his ongoing Discovering Robert E. Howard columns). It’s too hard to completely avoid the foundational figures of swords & sorcery when writing as often as I do, but I try to keep it to a minimum.

All this is a complicated way to say I’m reviewing The Road of Azrael by Robert E. Howard, and feel fully justified in doing so. It collects five historical tales of varying quality.

The paperback edition I read has execrable cover art, which did nothing to add appeal for me. Fortunately, the first thing in the book is a laudatory introduction by Gordon Dickson, no slouch of a storyteller himself, praising REH’s storytelling talents. Not that I need reminding of just how good Howard could be, but it’s always nice to see him get the praise he deserves. Unfortunately, I did not like the opening story, “Hawks Over Egypt.”

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Fantasia 2017, Day 14, Part 2: Folklore and Fans (November and Tokyo Idols)

Monday, November 20, 2017 Matthew David Surridge Comments 0 Comment

November I wrote the other day about 78/52, the first movie I saw at Fantasia on Wednesday, July 26. It played at the De Sève Theatre, the smaller of the two main Fantasia cinemas, and as it happened I’d see two more movies there the same day. The first was an Estonian movie (technically an Estonian-Dutch-Polish co-production) called November, a period piece set among Northern forests, rich in folklore and cinematic beauty. The second was a documentary called Tokyo Idols, about the Tokyo-centred industry of young female pop singers.

November was written and directed by Rainer Sarnet from the novel Rehepapp by Andrus Kivirähk. Shot in a sumptuous black and white, it shows us an Estonian peasant village in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, isolated among the deep woods, ruled by a family of Germans. We see the grinding poverty of pre-industrial village life and we see the German lords in their rich but decaying manor house. More significantly, perhaps, we see the world of spiritual forces and witchcraft within which the peasants live. Dead souls return to share a feast. Witches can teach a girl to take the shape of a wolf. Hidden treasures lurk under floorboards. Plagues take human form. And you can sell your soul to the devil to get a servant made of scraps of wood and other leftovers, a thing called a kratt; if you’re really cunning, if you know the trick of it, maybe you can cheat the devil and get away with your soul intact.

Against this rich background we see a love triangle develop. Liina (Rea Lest) is love with Hans (Jörgen Liik) who himself has his heart set on the German baroness. In and around this are other subplots and anecdotes of village life. A man becomes obsessed with the maid of the manor house. Older people see what might have in their own lives as Liina pursues Hans. Hans, meanwhile, also aspires to be a poet. But if he sells his soul for love, can he ever become the writer he wants to be?

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Vintage Treasures: Sword & Sorceress, edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Monday, November 20, 2017 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

Sword and Sorcery has a rich history of anthology series. Lin Carter’s seminal Flashing Swords and Andy Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness are probably the most famous examples, but in terms of longevity and influence on the field I think they’re both eclipsed by Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress anthologies. The first one appeared from DAW Books in 1984, and there’s been a new volume every year since, with a single three-year gap between 2004-07. Last year’s Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress, edited by Elisabeth Waters, was #31.

The series is critical to the history of the field for more than its longevity, however. Unlike Carter and Offutt, who invited established authors to fill their pages, Bradley and her fellow editors opened their volumes up to submissions, and the results were pretty extraordinary. Numerous young writers who would go on to great things, many of them women, were discovered or promoted very early in their career in the pages of S&S, including Emma Bull, Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Roberson, Diana L. Paxson, Laurell K. Hamilton, Phyllis Ann Karr, Rachel Pollack, Vera Nazarian, Deborah J. Ross, Elizabeth Moon, Janet Fox, Laura J. Underwood, Rosemary Edghill, Syne Mitchell, Devon Monk, Carrie Vaughn, and many, many others. You could make a pretty compelling case that Sword & Sorceress (together with its sister publication, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine) dramatically remade modern fantasy, and may be the single greatest influence on 21st Century American fantasy so far.

The first volumes of S&S came out just as I entered grad school and my reading time dropped precipitously. So I missed out on al the excitement, but it’s not too late to catch up. I found the above collection of the first nine volumes (plus VIII and XV) in great shape on eBay, and bought it for $20, about two bucks per book — about half the original cover price. That’s a heck of a bargain for a lot of great reading.

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Future Treasures: Persepolis Rising by James S. A. Corey

Sunday, November 19, 2017 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

James S. A. Corey is the pen name of fantasy author Daniel Abraham (the Long Price Quartet) and writer Ty Franck. Their Expanse series, a New York Times bestseller, is one of the most popular SF series on the shelves at the moment. It has been filmed as The Expanse, a breakout hit for the SyFy channel, which was just renewed for a third season.

At six volumes this is a substantial reading project already. The seventh novel, Persepolis Rising, arrives in hardcover next month from Orbit.

AN OLD ENEMY RETURNS

In the thousand-sun network of humanity’s expansion, new colony worlds are struggling to find their way. Every new planet lives on a knife edge between collapse and wonder, and the crew of the aging gunship Rocinante have their hands more than full keeping the fragile peace.

In the vast space between Earth and Jupiter, the inner planets and belt have formed a tentative and uncertain alliance still haunted by a history of wars and prejudices. On the lost colony world of Laconia, a hidden enemy has a new vision for all of humanity and the power to enforce it.

New technologies clash with old as the history of human conflict returns to its ancient patterns of war and subjugation. But human nature is not the only enemy, and the forces being unleashed have their own price. A price that will change the shape of humanity — and of the Rocinante — unexpectedly and forever…

Here’s the complete list of novels.

The Expanse
Leviathan Wakes
Caliban’s War
Abaddon’s Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon’s Ashes
Persepolis Rising

Persepolis Rising will be published by Orbit on December 5, 2017. It is 560 pages, priced at $28 on hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Daniel Dociu. See all of our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and Fantasy here.

The November Fantasy Magazine Rack

Sunday, November 19, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

A fine crop of magazines this month, with original fiction by Nancy Kress, Brian M. Sammons, Barry N. Malzberg, Mercedes Lackey, Tina Connelly, Karin Tideck, Sue Burke, and many others. Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in early November (links will bring you to magazine websites).

Black Static — fiction by Ruth EJ Booth, Ralph Robert Moore, Mel Kassel, Carly Holmes, Andrew Humphrey, and Georgina Bruce. Cover by Tara Bush
Clarkesworld — new fiction by D.A. Xiaolin Spires, Sue Burke, Mike Buckley, Suzanne Walker, and Nicoletta Vallorani, plus two reprints
Galaxy’s Edge — issue #29 has an original fiction from Nancy Kress, Sandra M. Odell, Barry N. Malzberg, Kevin J. Anderson, Mercedes Lackey, Larry Hodges, and many others
Nightmare — original fiction from Will Ludwigsen and Karin Lowachee, along with reprints by Molly Tanzer and Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Interzone — fresh fiction from Laura Mauro, Rachael Cupp, Dan Grace, Erica L. Satifka, R. Boyczuk, and 2017 James White Award Winner Stewart Horn
The Dark — new fiction from Octavia Cade and L Chan, and reprints from Neil Williamson and Lisa L. Hannett
Occult Detective Quarterly — issue #3 has new fiction by William Meikle. Brian M. Sammons, S.L. Edwards, Aaron Smith, and many others — plus plenty of reviews. and “Robert E. Howard’s Weird Detectives” by Bobby Derie
Uncanny — all new fiction from Karin Tidbeck, Sarah Monette, Tina Connelly, and others, plus reprints by Zen Cho and Rachel Swirsky

Click any of the thumbnail images above for bigger images. Our late October Fantasy Magazine Rack is here.

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I Was Paper Trained by Philip K. Dick

Saturday, November 18, 2017 Thomas Parker Comments 5 comments

My oldest son Sam loves the movie Blade Runner above almost any other, and so he was at least provisionally interested when the recent and long-delayed sequel, Blade Runner 2049 hit the theaters. Myself, I didn’t care much one way or the other. I like the original movie well enough (though it’s not the touchstone for me that it seems to be for many others) but as for the sequel, well… the two hours that will forever go down in infamy as Prometheus did a lot to damage my moviegoing relationship with Ridley Scott, which was never that warm to begin with. (I know Scott was “just” the executive producer on 2049, but still. Once someone has charged you twelve dollars for the privilege of farting in your face, you don’t forget it.)

In any case, the merits of the movies are beside the point. It has long irked me, as a science fiction fan and as a father, that Sam’s enthusiasm for Blade Runner has always been untempered by any encounter with Philip K. Dick’s actual novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? or indeed, with anything by the man who I regard as the greatest of all science fiction writers. Before you call Child Protective Services, please know that I didn’t fail in every way as a parent — Sam has a wife and a home and a job, he can tie his shoes and put together a coherent English sentence, he’s kind to animals and considerate to everyone he meets, at least until he finds out who they voted for, and he’s a hell of a cook. He’s a fine and productive person and my pride in him is unbounded… but really, c’mon — Phillip K. Dick!

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar Saga: Series Wrap-Up

Saturday, November 18, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 2 comments

Last week I concluded my book-by-book look at Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Pellucidar novels, the prehistoric world inside the Earth’s crust where the stationary sun eradicates the passage of time. The complete series consists of seven books:

Compared to Burroughs’s other two long-running science-fiction series, Mars/Barsoom and Venus/Amtor, Pellucidar is more difficult to summarize. The Venus novels were written over a short period of time during the end of Burroughs’s career and all feature the same hero, Carson Napier. There are no Venus classics, with the best (Lost on Venus) only middling and the rest ranging from bland to unreadable. The Mars series presents a vast canvas that arcs across Burroughs’s career, but it’s the most consistently high quality of any of his series, including the Tarzan novels, so it’s not too difficult to give it a broad analysis that primarily looks at changes in protagonists.

The Pellucidar books, however, present conundrums when consumed in a short period. Like Mars, Pellucidar spans the major phases of ERB’s career: success in the ‘teens, a stabilizing period in the twenties, a steepening decline throughout the thirties, a World War II revival, and a “lost” story and final volume published posthumously in the sixties. Unlike Mars, Burroughs visited Pellucidar sporadically, with a fourteen-year lapse after the first two paired novels, and later a seven-year gap.

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Ragnarok Publications Cancels Forthcoming Books

Friday, November 17, 2017 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

John R. Fultz recently alerted us to some unfortunate news: Ragnarok Publications, the independent small press behind the acclaimed anthologies Blackguards and Kaiju Rising: Rise of Monsters, has officially canceled their slate of upcoming novels. This affects several books we were really looking forward to, including John’s upcoming Son of Tall Eagle, the sequel to The Testament of Tall Eagle. Here’s part of the announcement posted on the Ragnarok website yesterday:

It’s time for a hard decision.

In order for us to get our feet under us again, we have to reboot in a way. It’s extremely unfortunate and we wrestled with this decision, but for now, we’re closing down the majority of our novel contracts. We feel like the authors we work with are family and this is the last thing we wanted to do — hurt our family. We love and believe in all the novels we’ve published, but we simply cannot afford to keep them in print, nor can we afford to put out new novels at the level of quality that we are known for.

Here’s the complete text of the announcement from publisher Jeremy Mohler.

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