Black Gate – Page 538 – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

New Treasures: The War Dogs Trilogy by Greg Bear

Tuesday, February 14, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Greg Bear is one of the finest SF novelists working today — he’s a top-notch writer with a keen imagination, and easily one of the most ambitious writers I have read in any genre. His 1985 novel Blood Music, an SF-horror story of a bio-engineered viral apocalypse that brings sentience to individual human cells, remains one of the most original and mind-boggling SF novels I’ve ever read, and his Hugo-nominated novel Queen of Angels, set in an L.A. radically transformed by nanotechnology and huge advances in psychotherapy, was even better.

So I was surprised to see a writer of Bear’s ambition and vision turn his attention to straight-ahead military SF… although, perhaps it’s not as straight-ahead as it sounds. Here’s the description for the opening volume in the trilogy, War Dogs.

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January Short Story Roundup

Tuesday, February 14, 2017 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 6 comments

Welcome to the first short story roundup of 2017. While I won’t neglect the past month’s heroic fantasy, there’s been an explosion of new magazines, and I think John O’Neill sent me copies of all of them. So, next to Swords and Sorcery Magazine (which I woefully neglected for the past two roundups), there is the cool, old-school-looking The Audient Void, and the magnificently-produced Occult Detective Quarterly.

Issue 60 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine marks the completion of five years of continuous existence for the ‘zine. Every month, for sixty months, editor Curtis Ellett has published two new works of heroic fantasy. To mark this milestone, he has gotten new banner art and included an extra-long bonus story.

“Princess in a Bottle” by Christopher G. Hall is a familiar tale of talented, penniless adventurer hired for dangerous mission. There are some not-too surprising twists, and a ferocious beast described as “ghastly and uncouth,” which makes it sound like he chewed with his mouth open. I will remember it for the great name of its hero, Cat-eye Jack, if nothing else.

James Van Pelt’s “The Sword Imperial” is an ambitious work. Hndred, a young farmer, discovers a jeweled sword buried on his land. Inspired by his late father’s military days and fired by the stories of an army officer passing through town, he leaps when the chance arises to prove his bravery. Nested within Hndred’s own story are those of several other famous and infamous swords. I much prefer Van Pelt’s straightforward depiction of bravery instead of the “deconstruction” it’s subjected to so often today.

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Battles with Blades and Bows, and Creatures Charming and Terrifying: Journeys, edited by Teresa Edgerton

Monday, February 13, 2017 David B. Coe Comments 2 comments

I admit it. As both a writer and a reader, I’m a sucker for a good themed anthology. The writer in me loves responding creatively to a prompt, finding inspiration in the unexpected. The reader in me is always fascinated to see the range of tales a collection of talented, thoughtful authors can tease from a shared basic notion.

Journeys, an epic fantasy anthology, edited by Teresa Edgerton and published by Nathan Hystad’s imprint, Woodbridge Press, hits the cybershelves on February 15th. For fans of sword and sorcery, of legend and myth, of quests and creatures and unforeseen narrative twists, it is a strong, at times compelling collection of short fiction from fourteen accomplished authors. The theme for the anthology is fairly simple and broad enough to allow every contributor as much freedom as possible. As Hystad put it, “Though I was asking for a common trope, the genre could be… really any fantasy style, with a journey, quest, or adventure as the central premise.”

Great anthologies often bring together a mix of established authors, and writers who are just at the start of their professional careers. On the one hand, we have well-known artists who can be counted on to build on a long personal history of excellent storytelling. We also encounter, though, the fresh voice, the writer whose name is not yet familiar, but whose talent shines through in the most surprising ways. With Journeys, Teresa Edgerton has managed to strike such a balance, bringing together authors from the UK. and the US, some with long resumés, some with only a story or two to their credit.

Among the more established names, we find John Gwynne, who draws inspiration from Celtic legend in “The Sundering,” a story of love, betrayal, and vengeance. Gail Z. Martin, who on her own and with her husband, Larry N. Martin, has penned several series ranging from epic fantasy to steampunk to urban fantasy, gives us a tale set in the universe explored by her Fallen Kings Cycle. Adrian Tchaikovsky and Juliet E. McKenna, who have enjoyed success in the U.K. as well as the U.S., give us a pair of powerful narratives. Tchaikovsky’s “The World Wound,” follows rivals who must work together to heal a rift in the fabric of the world that threatens the very existence of humanity. McKenna, in “The Road to Hadrumal,” has returned to one of her own previously explored worlds to craft a story of magic and hope.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: An Exclusive Excerpt from Soleri by Michael Johnston

Monday, February 13, 2017 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Black Gate is very pleased to offer our readers an exclusive excerpt from Michael Johnston’s upcoming epic fantasy Soleri, to be published in hardcover by Tor this summer. We have the extended, “Director’s Cut” version of the prologue, entitled “The Black Sand,” which sets up the mythology of the book. Here’s a taste.

They used to be fishermen, but that night hunger made them thieves. Under a moonless sky the men set out from the island in small wooden skiffs, sailing across the ink black sea toward the distant city. They were crowded in the long thin boats, crammed shoulder to shoulder, some turned sideways or doubled over to shield themselves against the waves. Gusty wind and angry water forced a few ships to turn back, while others were lost to the surf, and those who journeyed onward kept their eyes focused on the horizon, searching for the dim silhouette of the Dromus. The great wall was hewn from cinder-grey rock and reflected no light, its jagged ridge biting at the lowhanging stars like a blacker piece of night. The skiff rolled and the boy caught sight of the desert barrier. His stomach ached, but not from nausea. He had eaten little in the past few days — stale salt cod, sea grass steeped in broth.

Up ahead, the first raiders made landfall. One by one the boats crashed into the surging whitecaps at the edge of the beach, the waves tossing the smaller ones, dashing others on the rocks, leaving the fishermen scrambling in the tide. The undertow took the unluckier of them, their bodies rolling over and over in the froth. Those who made it to shore moved quickly to conceal their arrival… The boy waited, trembling with fear and excitement as the last skiffs ground their hulls into the beach. The men were restless, eager. He felt an elbow in his side and craned his neck in time to catch the first sickle of sunlight as it lit the upper edge of the Dromus with a golden halo.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mark Rigney, Michael A. Armstrong, C.S.E. Cooney, Vaughn Heppner, E.E. Knight, Jason E. Thummel, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Harry Connolly, and others, is here.

Soleri is 368 pages, priced at $27.99 in hardcover and $14.99 for the digital edition. It will be published by Tor Books on June 13, 2017.

Read the complete excerpt here.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Nero Wolfe – Stamped for Murder

Monday, February 13, 2017 Bob Byrne Comments 2 comments

The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe radio show aired in 1950 and 1951, starring Sidney Greenstreet. I mentioned it in a prior post. I’ve taken one of the episodes, Stamped for Murder, and turned it into an 11,000 word story. I kept most of the dialogue and the original scenes, since I wanted to adapt the show. I’ve tried to make it more Stout-like, as I don’t think that the series was very true to the original stories. So, some liberties here and there. But hopefully you’ll enjoy a “new” Wolfe pastiche!

CHAPTER ONE

Nero Wolfe had just settled his seventh of a ton into the only chair that really fit him. Made of Brazilian Mauro wood, it was in this room, the office: as opposed to the dining room, kitchen or the front room because he spent about nine hours a day here. You read that right: nine hours. More on that later.

Down from his two hours in the plant rooms on the roof, he had greeted me with the standard “Good morning” and placed a spray of Miltonia Charlesworthi in the vase on his desk. After going through the usual ritual, which includes drinking beer, brought by our chef, housekeeper and doorman, Fritz, going through the morning mail and checking his pen (which I’ve already done), he looked up at me.

“Your notebook please, Archie.”

It was there on my desk, ready for use. I took a pen from the middle drawer and swiveled my chair, not made of Mauro wood but under much less pressure, to face him.

“Inform Mister Salzenzbach that the recent Long Island pea fowl he provided was most unsatisfactory. Pea fowl’s breast flesh is not sweet and tender unless it is well protected from all alarms. Especially from the air, to prevent nervousness. Long island is full of airplanes.”

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Vintage Treasures: Some Classic Science Fiction Hardcovers

Sunday, February 12, 2017 John ONeill Comments 7 comments

A while back I got a letter from a reader saying, “I love those photos you post of your eBay finds!” Well, that warms my heart. So here we are with another batch, a look at a lot of nine books I bought on December 11, 2016.

This one is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it’s all hardcovers. Usually I spend my hard-earned collecting dollars on paperbacks, but this particular lot — a truly fabulous set of vintage anthologies from the late 70s and early 80s — was simply too tempting to pass up. Most of the books were in terrific shape, and even the ones I already owned (like The Hugo Winners — who doesn’t have a copy of The Hugo Winners?) made great replacement copies.

The other interesting thing about this lot was the price: I was the only bidder, and I won the whole shebang for just $4.95. That’s about 50 cents a book, for some of the best SF anthologies ever made. Man, that’s just criminal.

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Dorgo’s Dozen Questions: Getting Grilled by Joe Bonadonna

Sunday, February 12, 2017 SELindberg Comments 0 Comment

Thanks to Joe Bonadonna for the opportunity to be grilled by Dorgo’s Dozen questions. Phew, this will be intense! One cannot lie to a detective as keen as Dorgo, especially when his dowsing rod can sense minor indiscretions — I just hope he can differentiate between fantasy and reality. So please read on, as I attempt to pass the interrogation.

Who the hell are you?

I’m Seth (S.E.) Lindberg, residing near Cincinnati, Ohio working as a microscopist during sunlight and writer by moonlight. Two decades of practicing chemistry, combined with a passion for the Sword & Sorcery genre, drives me to write adventure fictionalizing alchemy. I write the Dyscrasia Fiction series and contribute to Perseid Press anthologies. All are invited to the Goodreads.com Sword & Sorcery Group which I co-moderate.

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Winter 2016 Space & Time Magazine Now Available

Saturday, February 11, 2017 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Space & Time magazine celebrated its 50th Anniversary last year, an extraordinary landmark for a small press magazine. It was founded in 1966 by Gordon Linzner, who edited it for four decades. Hildy Silverman took over in 2007, and she has edited it for the past ten years. Honestly, I thought it had stopped publishing a couple of years ago, so I was surprised to find a copy of the Winter 2016 issue at my local Barnes & Noble last week. We’ve never covered the magazine here, but heck. It’s not too late to start.

Space and Time is one of the few remaining print genre magazines — and one of the only ones that’s not a digest. (The only others I can think of at the moment are Cemetery Dance and Locus.) The Winter 2016 issue has fiction by Peter David, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Christopher M. Cevasco, Mary Mascari, and others. The magazine is well designed and laid out, and illustrated throughout, with professional art by Martin Hanford, Alfred Klosterman, Alan Beck, Skikhar Dixit, and others.

In addition to the fiction and poetry, the magazine has highly readable nonfiction content, including an editorial by Silverman with some excellent writing advice, a film column by Daniel M. Kimmel that looks at classic SF movies (in this case the 1985 Enemy Mine), an interview with Leanna Renee Hieber, a review of The Winter Boy by Sam Tomaino, and more.

Here’s the complete contents.

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Ed Bryant, August 27, 1945 – February 10, 2017

Saturday, February 11, 2017 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

SF author and critic Ed Bryant died yesterday after a lengthy illness.

Bryant wrote a single novel, Phoenix Without Ashes (1975), a collaboration with Harlan Ellison. As an author he was best known for his short fiction, including his Nebula Award-winning stories “Stone” (1978) and “giANTS” (1979). His collections include Among the Dead and Other Events Leading Up to the Apocalypse (1973), Cinnabar (1976, cover by Lou Feck), and Particle Theory (1981, cover by Richard Powers), which contained both “Stone” and “giANTS.” His most recent collection was Predators and Other Stories (2014), from ReAnimus Press. He was a contributor to the Wild Cards shared world series, and was featured on the cover of issue #0 of Pulphouse magazine (1991).

But Bryant’s most significant contribution to the field, and certainly the way I came to know him best, was through his reviews. He had long-running review columns in Locus (for nearly two decades, 1989-2007), The Twilight Zone magazine (1987-89), and Cemetery Dance (1990-98), and published reviews in Vertex, TaleBones, and many other places. Bryant’s columns were frequently the first features I read in many of my favorite magazines. He was an insightful and prolific critic with a keen appreciation for a good tale, as well as a frequent convention-goer. His numerous convention reports in Locus were always entertaining, and did a great deal to promote science fiction conventions across the country.

Ed Bryant died on February 10th in North Denver, from complications of Type 1 Diabetes. He was 71.

Morbid Number Crunching: The Norman Bates Kill Tally

Saturday, February 11, 2017 Ryan Harvey Comments 3 comments

Okay, legit now: Happy Valentine’s Day Weekend.

Beyond the 1978 original, I have close to zero interest in the Halloween franchise filled with numerous sequels, a partial reboot, a remake, a sequel to the re-make, and now another partial reboot sequel (I think; details on the new film remain unclear at this point). The only other film in the Halloween series that interests me is Halloween III: Season of the Witch, which has no connection to any other series installment. However, Halloween III is ultra-bizarre and it has the benefit of making the best use of the holiday.

The only “slasher” franchise that I’m actually a fan of is Psycho. The original Alfred Hitchcock Psycho is a masterpiece, obviously, but it wasn’t a slasher horror film in the way we define these movies now (i.e. define them post-Halloween). It was one of the critical building blocks of what slasher films would become. Its sequels, however, were released when the slasher film was a firmly established genre. And bizarrely, I’m way into them.

Since I recently did a write up on the original Halloween, it became imperative… imperative … that I chronicle the killing spree of the grandfather of the screen slashers, Norman Bates. Because lists are fun.

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