Black Gate – Page 511 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Edinburgh’s Monthly Mini-Convention: Shoreline of Infinity’s Event Horizon

Thursday, May 11, 2017 M Harold Page Comments 0 Comment

Ken McLeod at Shoreline of Infinity's Event Horizon — Ken McLeod reading at Shoreline of Infinity’s Event Horizon

255 IMG_20170510_194852 — Like the old thing you like, but genuinely new

Confession: My problem with Science Fiction conventions is that 33% of the way through, I am always seized with a desire to go home and write Science Fiction.

I can only sit still for so long without typing. 24 hours in and I’m more excited by about hanging out with other SF folk than I am about panels and readings. That’s why I’m lazy about going to local performance events.

It helps, of course, that Edinburgh is already Science Fiction Convention: the City. It’s large enough to support overlapping cohorts of geeks spawned by the local universities the way a recurrent nova spawns expanding spheres of luminous gas. At the same time, my city is small enough that once you are plugged in, you really are plugged in. So, I already have people to hang out with.

What lured me out of my hermetic bubble was the promise of a balanced slice of the convention experience: performance followed by drinking and chatting.

Shoreline of Infinity Magazine‘s Event Horizon has grown since 2015 to become awfully like an actual monthly science fiction mini-convention.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: Pirates in Hell, edited by Janet Morris and Chris Morris

Thursday, May 11, 2017 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive excerpt from Pirates in Hell, the newest anthology from Janet & Chris Morris. “Goat-Beard the Pirate, Part 2: Evil Angel” is a 4,000-word free-standing excerpt from a 3-part tale. It is written by Janet Morris and Chris Morris.

Rearing high above the combers, it towered, a tidal beast that arched itself, then plunged upon the Argo, swallowing ship and sailors whole. One baleful orb of blackest ice blinked like an eye. Rising anew, its mouth dripped chunks of seafarers and splinters of the Argo’s hull.

The leviathan swept its head from side to side, as if browsing. Its maw gaped wide. Its neck arced down, obscuring the entire ridge with inky shadow. A thundery roar like the sea enraged came from that throat and stunned those yet standing. All tried to flee, the four strangers and Medea in the lead. Some screamed. Some dropped their puny weapons to the ground and crawled the turf.

But the leviathan gaped once more, as if it would eat the ridge entire and all upon it. That maw from the Deep quested, then snapped shut, swallowing Jason and his crew with weapons bristling, the fire-pit, the Colchian standard, and nearly the sorceress as well.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mark Rigney, John Fultz, Jon Sprunk, Tara Cardinal and Alex Bledsoe, E.E. Knight, Vaughn Heppner, Howard Andrew Jones, David Evan Harris, John C. Hocking, Michael Shea, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, C.S.E. Cooney, and many others, is here.

Pirates in Hell in the 20th volume of the Heroes in Hell series. It was published by Perseid Press on April 12, 2017.

Read an exclusive excerpt from Pirates in Hell here.

New Treasures: The Black Witch by Laurie Forest

Thursday, May 11, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Is there anything as delightful as a debut fantasy novel that comes out of nowhere and gets rave reviews? (Never mind, it’s a rhetorical question). The latest example to cross my desk is The Black Witch by Laurie Forest, a 600-page fat fantasy that Kirkus calls “A massive page-turner that leaves readers longing for more,” and that Publishers Weekly praises with “Exquisite character work, an elaborate mythology, and a spectacularly rendered universe make this a noteworthy debut.” It arrived in hardcover and digital formats on May 1st.

A new Black Witch will rise… her powers vast beyond imagining.

Elloren Gardner is the granddaughter of the last prophesied Black Witch, Carnissa Gardner, who drove back the enemy forces and saved the Gardnerian people during the Realm War. But while she is the absolute spitting image of her famous grandmother, Elloren is utterly devoid of power in a society that prizes magical ability above all else.

When she is granted the opportunity to pursue her lifelong dream of becoming an apothecary, Elloren joins her brothers at the prestigious Verpax University to embrace a destiny of her own, free from the shadow of her grandmother’s legacy. But she soon realizes that the university, which admits all manner of people — including the fire-wielding, winged Icarals, the sworn enemies of all Gardnerians — is a treacherous place for the granddaughter of the Black Witch.

As evil looms on the horizon and the pressure to live up to her heritage builds, everything Elloren thought she knew will be challenged and torn away. Her best hope of survival may be among the most unlikely band of misfits… if only she can find the courage to trust those she’s been taught to hate and fear.

The Black Witch was published by Harlequin Teen on May 1, 2017. It is 601 pages, priced at $19.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition. The cover was designed by Mary Luna. Read an excerpt at Entertainment Weekly.

Black Gate Interviews Egyptian Science Fiction Author Mohammad Rabie

Wednesday, May 10, 2017 Sean McLachlan Comments 1 comment

51JYgQ68kPL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ One pleasant stop on my recent trip to Cairo was the American University’s bookshop near Tahrir Square. It’s a treasure trove of books on Egyptology and Egyptian fiction in translation. Among the titles I picked up was the dystopian novel Otared by Mohammad Rabie.

This novel, originally published in Arabic in 2014 and published in English in 2016 by Hoopoe, the fiction imprint of the American University of Cairo, is a grim dystopian tale of Cairo in 2025.

After several botched revolutions in which the people repeatedly fail to effect real social and political change, Egypt is invaded by a foreign power. The army crumples, most of the police collude with the occupiers, and the general public doesn’t seem to care. A small rebel group decides to take back their nation, and one of its agents is former police officer turned sniper, Otared. The rebels basically become terrorists, deciding the only way to get the people to rise up is to make life under the occupation intolerable, which means killing as many innocent civilians as possible.

The world Rabie paints reminds me very much of the insane landscape in Paul Auster’s In the Country of Last Things, with its violence, its cruelty, and its bizarre customs (in Otared almost everyone wears a mask) that begin to make sense once you learn more about the world. Throw in a nightmarish disease that affects only children, plus a national death wish, and you have a grim but compelling read. No science fiction novel has gut punched me this hard for a long, long time.

Mohammad Rabie is an emerging force in Egyptian letters. Born in 1978, he graduated from the Faculty of Engineering in 2002. His first novel, Amber Planet, was released in 2010 and won first prize in the Emerging Writers category of the Sawiris Cultural Award Competition in 2011. His second novel, Year of the Dragon, came out in 2012. Otared was shortlisted for the International Prize for Arabic Fiction in 2016 (popularly referred to as the Arabic Booker). Curious to learn more, I sat down with Rabie (OK, I shot him an email) to speak with him about his writing.

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May/June 2017 Asimov’s Science Fiction Now on Sale

Wednesday, May 10, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Asimov’s Science Fiction is celebrating its 40th Anniversary Year in 2017, and in her editorial this issue Sheila Williams reflects on the many milestones and anniversaries she’s had during her 35 years with the magazine.

Alas, the magazines’ fifteenth anniversary was not a happy occasion. Isaac died on April 6, 1992, leaving all of us heartbroken. He’d told me several times before he died that one major reason he’d founded the magazine was to give new writers a welcoming place to break into science fiction. He also expressed his deeply held wish that the magazine continue long after his death. While the following year wasn’t a special anniversary year, it was a happier one. In March 1993, Rick Wilber and I announced the creation of what would become known as the Dell Magazine Award. This award, which goes to the best SF or fantasy story by a full-time college student, seeks to further Isaac’s legacy of supporting emerging authors. Later that year, I hit another important milestone — the birth of my first daughter, Irene.

I don’t remember if we held a twentieth anniversary celebration for the magazine in 1997, but I do remember that the magazine hit a grand slam at the Hugos. Asimov’s stories picked up the award in all three short fiction categories, and Gardner Dozois won one of his many Hugos for best editor. The twenty-fifth anniversary is another blur, partly because my second daughter, Juliet, was born in early July….

2017 is shaping up as a very good year, as well. As I write this, we are formulating plans for a fortieth anniversary celebration on April 13. It will be held in New York City at the Housing Works Bookstore Café on 126 Crosby Street. Although this issue doesn’t go on sale until April 25, I hope that many of you will have heard the word via social media and will have commemorated the occasion with us. Later in the year, Prime Books will be publishing Asimov’s Science Fiction: A Decade of Hugo & Nebula Award Winning Stories, 2005 to 2015 in conjunction with our anniversary year. In addition to many of the authors who appeared in our Thirtieth Anniversary Anthology, this book contains stories by Sarah Pinsker, David Levine, Karen Joy Fowler, Elizabeth Bear, Vylar Kaftan, Will McIntosh, and others. We hope to have a book signing in place in NYC to celebrate the launch of the book. Please keep up with us on social media to learn more about our plans.

Indeed, Derek Kunsken wrote about his adventurous trip to New York for Asimov’s fortieth anniversary celebration here.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1953: A Retro-Review

Wednesday, May 10, 2017 Matthew Wuertz Comments 2 comments

Galaxy Science Fiction began its fourth year of publication with the October, 1953 issue. Editor H. L. Gold kept up a great pace of monthly issues, each one containing all original stories, many of which were later reprinted. I applaud Gold for his efforts as I do editors of today’s fiction markets, who, like Gold, are striving to deliver great works of fiction to the world.

The Caves of Steel (Part 1) by Isaac Asimov — Lije Baley is a police detective in New York — an immense city spread over two thousand square miles (compared to the mere 300 of the early 21st century). Covered by a roof and walled in, like all other Cities, it’s like a cave.

Those who had ventured into space to colonize beyond Earth are known as Spacers. Over time, their technology advanced beyond the people on Earth, and when some of them returned to establish their own territory on Earth called Spacetown, no one on Earth had the power to stop them.

The police commissioner summons Baley to inform him that a Spacer was murdered in Spacetown. If they can’t find the murderer, the Spacers could ask Earth to pay indemnity fees, which would only fuel further outrage toward Spacers. Or if Earth refuses to pay, the outer world governments could use their advanced technology to harm the Earth in other ways.

Baley agrees to investigate, but the commissioner tells him the Spacers will only keep the murder confidential if one of their agents helps on the case — a robot named Daneel Olivaw.

Asimov has created an amazing world with this novel — imaginative yet gritty with tension. I can’t wait to see how the story continues to unfold. It’s been a great ride so far.

“The Model of a Judge” by William Morrison — A colony on one of Saturn’s moons holds a baking contest. The judge is a reformed carnivore named Ronar whose sense of taste is well beyond that of any human. He’s confident in his ability to choose a winner, but he’s amused by the varying ramifications in choosing each of the three finalists.

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Adventure in a Ruined Future Paris: The Dominion of the Fallen Novels by Aliette de Bodard

Wednesday, May 10, 2017 John ONeill Comments 3 comments

I met Aliette de Bodard at the Nebula Awards Weekend here in Chicago in 2015, and I was totally charmed. She is smart, self-deprecating, and very funny (and a very sharp dresser, as I recall). That was a few months before the debut of her major fantasy novel The House of Shattered Wings, which won the 2015 British Science Fiction Award, and which Tim Powers called “A Gothic masterpiece of supernatural intrigues, loves and betrayals in a ruined and decadent future Paris… this novel will haunt you long after you’ve put it down.” On her website, Aliette describes the books as:

A series of dark Gothic fantasies set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war – featuring magicians, witches, alchemists, Fallen angels, and the odd Vietnamese ex-Immortal…

The second novel, The House of Binding Thorns, arrived in trade paperback from Ace last month, and it’s already winning wide acclaim. F&SF called it “dizzying and beautiful,” and the B&N Sci-Fi Blog called it “A truly grand story, brimming with action, heart, representation, and magic.”

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How to Assemble an Instant Science Fiction Collection

Tuesday, May 9, 2017 John ONeill Comments 25 comments

I came home from the 2017 Windy City Pulp & Paper Show with a lot of books.

The 120 SF & fantasy paperbacks books above represent the bulk of my purchases this year. I found plenty of additional treasures — including early issues of Hugo Gernsback’s Science Wonder Stories, a handful of hardcovers, art books, bargain graphic novels, and plenty of magazines — but this year, it was mostly about the paperbacks.

And man, what a haul. As I mentioned in my brief report Saturday morning, one of the highlights of the convention was discovering a vendor in the back of the room selling mint condition, unread SF paperbacks from the 70s and 80s at cover price (about $2 each). It was like stepping back in time 30 years into a well-stocked bookstore. You can’t reasonably expect someone to keep their head under circumstances like that.

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Future Treasures: Nebula Awards Showcase 2017, edited by Julie E. Czerneda

Tuesday, May 9, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I attended the Nebula Awards ceremony here in Chicago last year, where Black Gate bloggers C.S.E. Cooney and Amal El-Mohtar were both nominated for awards, and got to see the gorgeous Nebula trophies (surely one of the most beautiful awards in the business) given out in person. So you can understand that I’ve been looking forward to Nebula Award Showcase 2017, which collects all of the winning stories — including “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong (Best Short Story), “Our Lady of the Open Road” by Sarah Pinsker (Best Novelette), and Binti by Nnedi Okorafor (Best Novella) — as well as excerpts from all the nominees for Best Novel (including the winner, Naomi Novk’s Uprooted) and all the nominees for Best Short Story.

Believe it or not, the Nebula Awards have been given out by SFWA for 50 years, and this is the 50th anthology collecting the winners and runners-up. That’s a lot of great fiction packed into a highly collectible series of hardcover and paperback volumes (that’s a subtle tip for you collectors.) Nebula Awards Showcase 2017 will be published by Pyr on May 16, 2017. It is 336 pages, priced at $18 in trade paperback and $9.99 for the digital edition — a bargain, considering it includes Binti (priced at $9.99 all on its own) in its entirety. The cover is by Maurizio Manzieri.

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Spacial Delivery by Gordon R. Dickson

Tuesday, May 9, 2017 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 2 comments

Spacial Delivery (1961), a slight and slender book, is a relic of a past age when not every new book by an author had to be some sort of masterpiece. The same year this book came out, Dickson published two other novels and ten short stories. Over the course of fifty years of published writing, he wrote 55 novels and nearly 200 short stories. I can’t say for sure, but that sort of volume seems to have given him the freedom to write whatever sort of stories he wanted, whether high-concept space opera like his Childe Cycle, pulp fare like Hour of the Horde, comic stories like his Hoka collaborations with Poul Anderson, or middle-of-the-road standalones like this book.

When my friend Carl tossed me this back in the early eighties, he told me it was a comedy. I trusted him and gave it a read. It was funny, not in the laugh-out-loud style of the Hoka stories (which if you haven’t read, are about teddy bear-like aliens who have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction, and act out human stories, including Sherlock Holmes and The Jungle Book), but good for a chuckle or two. On rereading, the humor’s a little thin, but it’s a decent enough way to spend a couple of hours.

Out in a crucial sector of space between regions of human and Hemnoid hegemony, lies Dilbia, a planet of high mountains and deep forests. The Dilbians have a rugged, frontier-style civilization, with people living in small towns or with their clans in forests. The Dilbians themselves, well, the cover gives it away. They sort of look like bears — very big bears.

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