Search Results for: tale covers

Vintage Treasures: Nebula Award Stories 17 edited by Joe Haldeman

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Nebula Award Stories 17 (Ace Books, 1985). Cover by Jeffrey Ridge I’ve covered a few noteworthy anthologies here in the last few weeks, including Isaac Asimov’s surprising Tin Stars, and Donald A. Wollheim’s excellent 1989 Annual World’s Best SF. It’s sharpened my appetite for good anthologies, and when I found Nebula Award Stories 17 in a small collection of vintage paperbacks I bought in eBay last month, I knew I’d found my next weekend read. The Nebula Awards anthologies have…

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Future Treasures: Transgressions of Power, Book 2 of The Broken Trust by Juliette Wade

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Mazes of Power and Transgressions of Power (DAW, 2020/21) Covers by Adam Auerbach I admit I got a little excited by the release of Mazes of Power last year, mostly because it’s set in a thousand year-old cave city (and if I have to explain why that’s so cool, we can’t be friends). But the series has become even more interesting with the impending release of the sequel, Transgressions of Power, arriving in hardcover in two weeks. Here’s an excerpt…

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Our Most Unusual Pulp Adventure

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10 Story Mystery, April 1943, and The All-Story Detective, October 1949 Based on my experience, I think that non-collectors often view us collectors as somewhat crazy. They just don’t approach things the way we do, particularly when it comes to whatever particular obsession drives us. They don’t understand why we collect, and they don’t understand what we do to collect, and they don’t understand that the desire to collect can often override what most folks would consider to be common sense. Case…

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Wandering a Monster-Ridden World: The Expert System’s Brother by Adrian Tchaikovsky

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The Expert System’s Brother and The Expert System’s Champion (Tor Books, 2018-21). Covers by Raphael Lacoste British author Adrian Tchaikovsky has been steadily making a name for himself since he burst onto the scene with his 10-volume epic fantasy Shadows of the Apt. He’s followed that with several ambitious new series, including the Echoes of the Fall fantasy trilogy and the far-future hard science fiction Children of Time series. His latest is a sequence of tales in Tor.com’s prestigious novella…

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Future Treasures: Amid the Crowd of Stars by Stephen Leigh

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Stephen Leigh has had a long and successful writing career. I bought his debut novel Slow Fall to Dawn forty year ago. It turned out to be the opening volume in the Hoorka trilogy, an epic tale of space-faring assassins, recently collected in the handsome DAW omnibus volume Assassin’s Dawn. In the four decades since Leigh has published some 20 novels and over 40 short stories, including six volumes in the Ray Bradbury Presents series and, under the name S.L….

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A Modest Little Magazine: Whispers edited by Stuart David Schiff

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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,…

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

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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…

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

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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…

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

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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,…

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

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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…

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