Black Gate – Page 514 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

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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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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