Black Gate – Page 510 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Wolves, Bears, Cats & Dragons: The Best Animal Sidekicks in Fantasy

Sunday, May 14, 2017 Constance Cooper Comments 4 comments

From the OED:

sidekick, n.
…3. orig. U.S. slang. A companion or close associate; esp. a loyal assistant of a more important or powerful person; (also) a partner in crime, an accomplice.

Last spring I published my first novel, Guile. It’s a YA fantasy in which the main character, Yonie, has a talking cat named LaRue for her best friend and quasi-sister. Writing their scenes together made me think about other animal sidekicks I’ve loved in fantasy literature.

Human sidekicks (or humanoid, like Chewbacca) tend to have defined roles such as friend, colleague, or employee. With animal sidekicks the relationship is often closer. They may enjoy a unique bond with their human, sometimes even sharing their thoughts. Their emotional closeness is often reflected physically — an animal sidekick may act as a steed for a human, or if it’s small it may ride on the human’s shoulder.(*)

Here are some of my favorite books that have animal sidekicks, broken down roughly by intelligence level of the animal. I’m focusing on sidekicks, but please take it as given that these books also have wonderful settings, original ideas, and main characters to cheer for!

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A Tale of Two Covers: Neal Asher’s Infinity Engine

Sunday, May 14, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Last year we talked about War Factory, the second novel in Neal Asher’s Transformation series. So I kept my eye out for the third volume, Infinity Engine, which arrived in hardcover in March.

Infinity Engine was simultaneously published in the US by Night Shade (above left; cover by Adam Burn) and in the UK by Tor (above right, cover by Steve Stone). Over at Worlds in Ink, KJ Mulder expresses his enthusiasm for the US version.

I’m a huge fan of Neal Asher’s work and the covers for his novels are always something special. The covers for Infinity Engine, the conclusion to the Transformation trilogy, [are] no exception. This time round the folks at Night Shade Books have pulled out all the stops for the US edition that simply blows their UK counterpart out of the water. The artwork by Adam Burn is absolutely stunning. I think he might have just dethroned Jon Sullivan as my favourite cover artist.

With all due respect to my South African colleague Mulder, I think he’s way off base here. The Adam Burn’s cover, with its cataclysmic energy and vibrant yellows, is certainly eye-catching. But if these two books were side by side in Barnes & Noble, it would be Steve Stone’s cover, depicting a starship plunging at full speed into the churning, cold blue maelstrom of deep space, that I would reach for.

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May 2017 Clarkesworld Now Available

Sunday, May 14, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The longest story in the May Clarkesworld is Kelly Robson’s novelette “We Who Live in the Heart.” Here’s a snippet from Quick Sip Reviews.

The story centers [on] a character who has fled from human civilization belowground, a place where cooperation is king and time is heavily monitored and monitzed. The alternative, though, is to go up to the surface and try to live inside the body of whale-like creatures that seem about the only thing that can handle the extreme conditions. It’s a decision that the narrator was one of the first to make, to go out and try to create something in this waste, to survive where people didn’t think possible. And it’s a decision that Ricci is just making as the story opens, escaping a string of bad situations… We as humans are all different and the story does a lovely job of showing what that can mean, how people can still find value in each other and in their relative seclusion, forming loose bonds that perhaps don’t offer as much cohesion but don’t bind, either. That exist to be supportive and caring without suffocating. And I like how the story establishes that with the crew of Mama, how the main character comes to stand for this voice of freedom even as they do yearn for relationships and company… It’s a story with a great sense of wonder and fun, and it’s an amazing read!

The May Clarkesworld contains original fiction from Nick Wolven, Kelly Robson, E. Catherine Tobler, and Tang Fei, plus reprints from Kage Baker and James Tiptree Jr.

The cover, “Darkess,” is by Julie Dillon.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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A Mythic Crime Story: Top Cow’s Postal

Saturday, May 13, 2017 Derek Kunsken Comments 1 comment

Regular readers may notice that I try to sample a lot of different comic series. I like individual comics, but I also try to understand the field and its sub-genres. Crime fiction has a long history in comics. Its modern incarnations include titles like Brian Azzarello’s 100 Bullets, Ed Brubaker’s Gotham Central and Criminal, among many others.

Last year I heard the Nerdist Comics Panel interview Bryan Edward Hill, a TV writer working on Top Cow’s Postal.

The premise was catchy: Eden is a town entirely populated by criminals laying low or getting new identities, completely off the grid. And the main character of the story is Mark, the mayor’s son who works as Eden’s postman and who has Asperger’s.

And it’s in development for TV.

So I checked it out.

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Buck Rogers meets Lovecraftian Horror: The Weird Space Novels by Eric Brown and Una McCormack

Saturday, May 13, 2017 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Shared worlds are chiefly a fantasy phenomenon — Thieves’ World, Liavek, Merovingen Nights, Heroes in Hell, Wild Cards — but not exclusively. In 2012, bestselling author Eric Brown created Weird Space, a shared world for Abaddon Books. Here’s an excerpt from the original press release.

This thrilling space-opera series will begin with the release of The Devil’s Nebula. Brown will introduce readers to the human smugglers, veterans and ne’erdowells who are part of the Expansion – and their uneasy neighbors, the Vetch Empire. When an evil race threatens not only the Expansion, but the Vetch too — an evil from another dimension which infests humans and Vetch alike and bends individuals to do their hideous bidding, only cooperation between them means the difference between a chance of survival and no chance at all.

Four novels have been written so far:

The Devil’s Nebula by Eric Brown (350 pages, May 29, 2012)
Satan’s Reach by Eric Brown (281 pages, July 30, 2013)
The Baba Yaga by Eric Brown and Una McCormack (332 pages, July 1, 2015)
The Star of the Sea by Una McCormack (297 pages, October 25, 2016)

All four were published by Abaddon, priced at $7.99 in paperback, and $5.99 for the digital editions. The covers are by Adam Tredowski.

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A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 2: The Door to Saturn

Saturday, May 13, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 4 comments

I’m back from my latest amble through the collected SF and fantasy stories of Clark Ashton Smith from publisher Night Shade. I’m reading these at a gradual pace, sprinkling a story here and there among whatever else I’m reading. It’s like having Clark Ashton Smith casually hang out with you for months at a time, a darkly erudite and sporadically mordantly humorous traveling companion who occasionally asks: “Hey, what are you reading there? Well, let me tell you this story I just thought up…”

Same caveat as for Vol. 1: If you’re a Clark Ashton Smith neophyte, these Night Shade chronological editions aren’t the best starting point discovering him. I recommend the Penguin Classics collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies for readers who want a quality primer with a collection of some of Smith’s stories in an inexpensive and easily available volume.

Vol. 2 features stories written over a more abbreviated period than in the previous volume: July 1930 to May 1931. Each story is listed below with its original date and place of publication — often (as is the case with “The Red World of Polaris” and “The Face by the River”) many years after when it was first composed, and sometimes in a modified form different from the corrected text Night Shade presents.

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2017 Locus Awards Finalists Announced

Saturday, May 13, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Locus Awards, voted on by readers in an open online poll, have been presented every year since 1971. (A quarter century before there was such a thing as an online poll. Back in the day, we used to send ballots through the mail. Ask your parents what that means.) The final ballot lists ten finalists in each category, including Science Fiction Novel, Fantasy Novel, Horror Novel, Young Adult Book, First Novel, Novella, Novelette, Short Story, Anthology, Collection, Magazine, Publisher, Editor, Artist, Non-Fiction, and Art Book. The winners will be announced at the Locus Awards Weekend on June 23-25, 2017.

Even if you didn’t vote in the awards, the list of Finalists makes a terrific Recommended Reading list. Jonathan Strahan posted the following on his Facebook feed this morning, and I agree completely.

Here’s a thought, fellow SF readers. Locus has just announced its long list for the Locus Awards. Forget that it’s an awards list for a moment, though. It’s a reading list.

So why not look down the list below for Best First Novel. and try something new? Pick a book from the list below. Buy a copy, borrow a copy, go to the library and grab a copy. Track one down, and try something new…. I can recommend the Lee, Shawl and Slatter books very highly. Some of the others look really interesting.

You can find the complete list of finalists at Locus Online, and last year’s winners here.

Future Treasures: Dark Cities, edited by Christopher Golden

Friday, May 12, 2017 John ONeill Comments 1 comment

The prolific Christopher Golden (who’s produced, by my count, over a hundred novels in the last 20 years) has edited several noteworthy anthologies recently, including zombie anthologies The New Dead (2010) and 21st Century Dead (2012), The Monster’s Corner (2011), and vampire collection Seize the Night (2015). He turns his attention to urban horror in Dark Cities, coming in hardcover next week from Titan.

For you puritans who don’t like to mix your horror genres, the Titan website notes “The book won’t include zombies, vampires, or anything apocalyptic.” But it does contain original non-apocalyptic, non-zombie-vampire fiction by Scott Smith, Tim Lebbon, Helen Marshall, M.R. Carey, Cherie Priest, Jonathan Maberry, Paul Tremblay, Nathan Ballingrud, Ramsey Campbell, Seanan McGuire, and many others.

In shadowy back alleys, crumbling brownstones, and gleaming skyscrapers, cities harbor unique forms of terror. Here lie malicious ghosts, cursed buildings, malignant deities, and personal demons of every kind.

Twenty of today’s most talented writers bend their skills toward the darkness, creating brand-new tales guaranteed to keep you awake at night — especially if you live in the dark cities.

Far worse than mythical creatures such as vampires and werewolves, these are horrors that lurk in the places you go every day — where you would never expect to find them. But they are there, and now that you know, you’ll never again walk the streets alone.

Dark Cities will be published by Titan Books on May 16, 2017. It is 400 pages, priced at $22.95 in hardcover and $7.99 for the digital edition. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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I Became a Science Fiction Fan at Exactly the Right Time: The Sixties

Friday, May 12, 2017 James Van Pelt Comments 14 comments

I’m convinced I became a science fiction fan at exactly the right time, the 60s. That was just long enough ago that there was so little science fiction (compared to now), that a young fan had to read the “classics” because there wasn’t the flood of new stuff appearing each month.

I don’t know how, exactly, I started reading E.E. Doc Smith, for example. His books originally appeared in the 30s and 40s. I bought the Skylark and Lensmen books in paperback, though, so they were still being reprinted. I read all of Edgar Rice Burroughs, also a writer who started in the early 1900s. Both the Tarzan and Barsoom stories started in 1912. Yet in the early 60s, the books were still coming out in reprints (with really cool covers).

I read H.G. Wells and Jules Verne because they were among the relatively few science fiction choices in our public library. At this time, I read science fiction exclusively. I read Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle because they scratched the science fiction itch without always exactly being science fiction. I didn’t discover H. Rider Haggard and Robert E. Howard until later. I also joined the Science Fiction Book Club in the 60s. One of my first purchases was the double-volume A Treasury of Great Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher and published in 1959 (I bought it because it counted as a single choice–I think it’s possible that part of my love for short fiction started with that awesome collection).

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Goth Chick News: Are the Blade Runner and Alien Worlds Colliding?

Thursday, May 11, 2017 Sue Granquist Comments 6 comments

I was super excited to see the new Blade Runner 2049 trailer released this week, partially because I was curious to see how much if any actual running Harrison Ford would actually be doing.

Okay, don’t look at me like you weren’t wondering exactly the same thing.

Turns out, there was more than one item to discuss in this latest look into our dark futures.

First, Mr. Ford does do a bit of a hustle at the 1:41 mark, which incidentally was not bad for a 75-year-old man. Next, Jared Leto’s Wallace character is sufficiently creepy with those cataract contact lenses. And apparently you make the future even more futuristic with 3-story-tall, sexed up holograms – who knew?

But what is really giving the fan girls and boys fits is the possible Easter egg at the 15-second mark.

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