Black Gate – Page 514 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

Classic SF from One of the Twentieth Century’s Great Masters: The Best of John W. Campbell

Wednesday, July 12, 2017 James McGlothlin Comments 2 comments

The Best of John W. Campbell (1976) was the seventh installment in Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series. Lester Del Rey (1915–1993) is again the editor; he also provides the introduction. H. R. Van Dongen (1920–2010) did the attractive cover art, and it seems in line with the artistic feel set by Dean Ellis, Darrell Sweet, and The Brothers Hildebrandt on the previous volumes. For those books, unless the author was deceased, the afterword was usually written by the author being celebrated. Since Campbell had passed a few years before this publication, his widow (also now deceased) provided an interesting afterword.

John W. Campbell (1910–1971) was more than just one of the greatest science fiction writers of the twentieth century. Probably more importantly, as editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later renamed Analog) from 1937 until his death, he is generally credited with being the primary shaper of the Golden Age of science fiction. He tutored such giants in the field as A. E. van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, and the great Robert A. Heinlein. And everyone from Isaac Asimov to Robert Silverberg credited him with being a major influence on their writing.

As I’ve said before, I’m not generally a big fan of science fiction; I tend to lean more towards horror and fantasy. And thus I know I tend to caricature classic sci-fi as being sometimes tedious and outmoded. But as with some previous writers in Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series, I continue to be pleasantly surprised by some of these Golden Age (and later) science fiction writers. Since we’ve covered this volume once before (back in 2013), this time, rather than simply giving an overview of selected stories, I will primarily focus on some recurring themes and give some overall thoughts.

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If Batman Were a Teenager and Magically Talented: The Maradaine Novels by Marshall Ryan Maresca

Tuesday, July 11, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The Thorn of Dentonhill was Marshall Ryan Maresca’s debut novel. It followed the adventures of Veranix Calbert, diligent college student by day and crime-fighting vigilante by night, in the crime-ridden districts of the port city of Maradaine. It was nominated for the Compton Crook award, but it was the Library Journal‘s pithy review (“Veranix is Batman, if Batman were a teenager and magically talented”) that really piqued my interest.

I featured the sequel, The Alchemy of Chaos, as a Future Treasure in December 2015, and last week I checked online to see if there was news of any new volumes. There are indeed… in the last two years Maresca has produced no less than five novels set in the world of Maradaine, and there’s two more in the pipeline. His Maradaine series has fast become one of the most popular and interesting urban fantasies on the market, and Maresca has responded splendidly to the demands of his fast-growing readership for more. Here’s a quick recap of the series.

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New Treasures: Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction, edited by Lisa Yaszek and Patrick B. Sharp

Tuesday, July 11, 2017 John ONeill Comments 5 comments

While I was at Wiscon in May, I didn’t just attend readings (although it probably seemed like it). I also hung out in the Dealer’s Room, where I bought a whole bunch of vintage paperbacks, most of which remain unpacked on the floor of my library. With luck, I can steal some time this weekend to photograph them for upcoming Vintage Treasures columns.

I haven’t unpacked them because all the time I would normally be spending with them, I’ve been spending instead with a fabulous anthology I bought from Greg Ketter: Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction. It’s packaged as a scholarly tome (and is even published by Wesleyan University Press), but don’t be fooled — this is a top-notch collection of pulp-era SF by women, which also doubles as a very compelling argument that “women have always been part of the genre” (to quote the back cover copy.) One of the great things about this volume — in addition to the fabulous (and rarely reprinted) pulp tales by Clare Winger Harris, Leslie F. Stone, C. L. Moore, and others — is that it also includes poetry, articles by women, editorials, and even a gorgeous selection of pulp covers in color.

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Disasterville U.S.A. :The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner

Tuesday, July 11, 2017 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 2 comments

If there is such a phenomenon as absolute evil, it consists in treating another human being as a thing.

Nick Halflinger in The Shockwave Rider

Cyberpunk appeared as a description of a sub-genre in the early eighties. The word first appeared in print in 1983 as the title of a story by Bruce Bethke and it was quickly adopted to cover the works of near-future science fiction by William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Pat Cadigan, and others. The general connection between books like Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Neal Stephenson’s Snowcrash (1992) was the depiction of high technology mixed into a crumbling, corrupt society.

Cyberpunk as a named thing might date to only 1983 or so, but as a movement in science fiction its roots are deeper. For years prior to the appearance of Neuromancer, usually thought of as the first cyberpunk novel, sci-fi authors had been writing about the dangerous effects — on society and individuals — of computers, communications, cybernetics, and related fields. In the UK, J.G.Ballard, and in the US, Philip K. Dick, laid a lot of the groundwork for the genre in books featuring rebels, man-machine interfaces, often lots of psychoactive drugs, and a general dystopian atmosphere. It’s little wonder that Dick’s 1968 novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, should become the basis for the film Blade Runner, easily one of the first cyberpunk movies.

English author John Brunner (discussed at great length here at Black Gate) started his writing career creating fairly standard space opera. In the mid-sixties he began writing stories in more contemporary settings, such as the 1965 novel, The Squares of the City. In it, a traffic engineer is hired to work in the newly-built capital of a South American nation (echoes of Brasilia). While there he becomes a piece, quite literally, in game of chess being played between two of the country’s power brokers.

This move to contemporary and near-future sci-fi culminated in the appearance of Stand on Zanzibar in 1968. Its portrayal of a wildly over-populated Earth, conveyed in the snapshot style of Dos Passos’ USA Trilogy, won Brunner the Hugo award for best novel. It also marks the start of what’s been called his Catastrophe Quartet.

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B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog on the Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of 2017 So Far

Monday, July 10, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Over at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Joel Cunningham has taken on the big job of cataloging the best books of the year so far. His list includes a whopping 25 titles… which may be more books than I’ve read this year. There’s some terrific stuff on his list, so let’s get to it.

All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries, by Martha Wells

Veteran fantasist Wells proves her sure hand at sci-fi as she imagines a future dominated by corporations, in which the twin imperatives of bureaucratic adherence to policies and the need to award all contracts to the lowest bidder result in every planetary mission being required to be accompanied by a company-supplied SecUnit, an artificially intelligent android built from cheap parts, and as likely to malfunction as all of the other shoddy equipment the expeditions are counting on to, oh, keep them breathing. The SecUnit narrating the story has hacked its own Governor Module, attaining sentience and free will; it would despise the humans it protects if it didn’t find them so boring, but it nevertheless refers to itself as Murderbot. When its humans are attacked by something outside of the experience provided by its data banks, however, Murderbot must turn its prickly, near-omniscient mind towards not just the survival of its humans, but itself. This slim read is both surprisingly funny and packed with intriguing future worldbuilding — all the more reason to celebrate the three planned sequels that will continue Murderbot’s adventures. Read our review.

All Systems Red was published by Tor.com on May 2, 2017. It is 160 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $3.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Jamie Jones. Read an excerpt at Tor.com.

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What Has Orbit’s Expansion Wrought?

Monday, July 10, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

I know most readers don’t pay attention to publishers. But I do. And I’ve been watching the astounding success of Orbit, the SF and Fantasy imprint of Hachette Book Group, for the past few years. Their breakout books include Andrzej Sapkowski’s New York Times bestselling Witcher series, James S. A. Corey’s The Expanse, Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, M.R. Carey’s The Girl With All the Gifts, and even Black Gate author John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper trilogy.

When Orbit US announced a major expansion two years ago, I was curious what it would bring. Turns out quite a bit… here’s just a sampling of some of their releases over the past 24 months.

Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes
Greg Bear’s War Dogs trilogy
Ian Tregillis’s Alchemy Wars trilogy
Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140
Alastair Reynolds’s Locus Award-winning Revenger
N.K. Jemisin’s Nebula nominee The Obelisk Gate
Brian McClellan’s new Gods of Blood and Powder series

That’s a darned impressive list. Of course, many of those authors probably would have been published even without the expansion… but you can’t say the same for their newer writers.

Not every publisher that hits it big plows some of their revenue back into developing new writers — Bantam Spectra, for example, once one of the most experimental and risk-friendly imprints, has shrunk their line to essentially a single author: George R.R. Martin. Martin is by far the top-selling fantasy writer in the field, but Bantam isn’t using that huge success to fund the search for their next new author. At least not as far as I can see.

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Self-published Book Review: The Ghost Box by Mike Duran

Sunday, July 9, 2017 Donald Crankshaw Comments 0 Comment

I’d like to keep the monthly schedule going, so please keep sending me books to review — see the instructions here.

Reagan Moon is a paranormal reporter working for the Blue Crescent, an LA tabloid. He’s good at his job, and one of the things that makes him so good is he doesn’t believe. Oh sure, there are strange things out there: cults and designer drugs and brain hacks, but nothing supernatural. Nothing that can’t be explained. He hasn’t believed in much since his dad died, and his girlfriend’s, Ellie’s, death less than a year ago only made him more of a cynic.

But tabloids don’t pay a whole lot, and if a rich eccentric wants to pay him to talk to a medium, he’s game. The problem is that Klammer wants him to make contact with Ellie, hinting that she wasn’t incinerated in a freak accident but rather harvested for some grotesque purpose. In grand noir tradition, Reagan is soon dodging the police on suspicion of being involved in the death of said medium. Whether holed up with the Mad Spaniard and his daughters, Kanya and Cricket, in their Asylum for strange artifacts, or following a lead to the Spiraplex, a grand building/science experiment centered around a giant statue of Anubis, and built by Klammer’s old business partner and rival, Soren Volden, Reagan is constantly in over his head.

The Ghost Box is the first book in Mike Duran’s Reagan Moon series. I reviewed the second book, Saint Death, last year, but I figured I should go back and cover the first one. Mike Duran started publishing in the Christian market, writing novels such as The Resurrection and The Telling, both of which contained supernatural elements that don’t neatly fit Christian theology, for which he received blow back from many readers of Christian fiction. The Ghost Box is an effort to get outside the narrow restrictions that limit what he can do in Christian publishing. Mike Duran doesn’t hide his Christian worldview, but neither is he pushy about it.

In fact, it’s clear that Reagan Moon is not a believer in pretty much anything. And there’s no conversion experience in this book. Or rather, it’s not a conversion to Christianity so much as a conversion to hope, an acknowledgment that there’s more to this world than the physical, that our spirits do survive after death.

Of course, to get there, Reagan Moon first has to see it with his own eyes. Enter Rival’s Curtain.

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July Issue of The Dark Now on Sale

Sunday, July 9, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Over at SF Revu, Sam Tomaino sheds some light on the latest issue of The Dark.

The first new story is “A Performance for Painted Bones” by Kelly Stewart… In a town where the populace is just skeletons, a dancer and a hunter have skin. They are kept alive as long as they do their jobs. But one could take the train east if there was a good reason to, like returning an object to its rightful owner. Written like a proposal for a movie, this is wonderfully atmospheric. Works perfectly.

The other new story is “A Lasting Legacy” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu… Ogu is from a disgraced family and wants to get respect by becoming the leader of the machi. He wants to find something that will ensure that. But his uncle is a disgrace and burden to the family. What can he do? A grim, sad story but very effective.

The Dark has its own brand of unique horror and is certainly worth reading. It deserves your support.

The July cover is by Vincent Chong. Here’s the Table of Contents for issue #26, cover-dated July 2017.

“A Performance for Painted Bones” by Kelly Stewart
“Girl, I Love You” by Nadia Bulkin (from Phantasm Japan,, 2014)
“A Lasting Legacy” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu
“Harvest” by Michael Harris Cohen (from From Their Cradle to Your Grave, 2013)

The Dark is co-edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Sean Wallace, with assistance by Jack Fisher. It is published monthly online and in digital formats, and includes two original stories and two reprints each issue. You can read issues free online, or help support the magazine by buying the ebook editions, available for the Kindle and Nook in Mobi and ePub format. Issues are around 50 pages, and priced at $2.99 through Amazon, B&N.com, Apple, Kobo, and other fine outlets — or subscribe for just $1.99 per issue. If you enjoy the magazine you can contribute to their new Patreon account here. You can also support The Dark by buying their books, reviewing stories, or even just leaving comments.

Read the July issue here, and see their complete back issue catalog here. We last covered The Dark with the May issue. See our June Fantasy Magazine Rack here, and all of our recent Magazine coverage here.

A Book That Makes You Yearn to be Stranded on a Desert Island: Modern Classics of Fantasy edited by Gardner Dozois

Sunday, July 9, 2017 John ONeill Comments 6 comments

Like most of you folks, I used to have more reading time. Like, a ton more reading time. Whole summer vacations just lazing around with my feet on the furniture and my nose in an epic fantasy. Nowadays I’m lucky to negotiate a three-day weekend and, believe me, that kind of reading time is much too precious to devote to a single author. Yes, reading vacations still tend to be devoted to big books — I haven’t broken that habit– but these days more often than not they’re thick anthologies that let me sample a wide range of writers. And usually anthologies curated by an editor who’s earned my trust.

That’s why I’m so partial to Gardner Dozois. He’s got great taste, for one thing. For another, he produces big books, the kind you can plan a vacation around. One of my favorites is his massive survey anthology Modern Classics of Fantasy, which is the kind of book that makes you wish you could be stranded on a desert island. Sure, I’d probably go hungry and miss the internet. But if it meant I finally had 15 uninterrupted hours to read this thing cover to cover, it’d totally be worth it.

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Any Sufficiently Advanced Technology…

Saturday, July 8, 2017 Derek Kunsken Comments 5 comments

I know this is a fantasy blog, but for this one I want to appeal to the third (and most famous) of Clarke’s laws, which is “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” because I want to talk about the scienciest, most extrapolatey, most out there science fiction, which isn’t overtly different from fantasy except in aesthetic.

This comes from my musings about writing a story set in orbit of a neutron star, and also because I was recently discussing with a friend where to find the hardest SF.

I get a lot of ideas when I read other authors. I love seeing what science people know and transform into story, and I love seeing that unique kind of creative ambition.

Some caveats: When I looked in my book shelf for examples to show a friend, I came up with three authors and six titles. My shelves don’t have every book, and so I’ll certainly miss some stunning works.

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