Search Results for: New Edge Sword

Re-reading Michael Moorcock’s The History of The Runestaff: What I Missed the First Time Around

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I don’t do re-reads, not often anyway. I’m usually too busy fighting neo-Nazis in the far future and wrestling dinosaurs on Mars. (You know, normal, everyday sort of stuff.) I decided to make an exception for The History of the Runestaff, however, mostly because I realized I had been recommending the thing to friends for years, but hadn’t touched it since I was twelve, when one of my friends dug the omnibus edition out of some weird corner in our…

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Art of the Genre: A Review of the 5E Monster Manual and its Place in D&D Product History

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So a month ago, I had the pleasure of reviewing the new Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition Players Handbook. At first, it seemed to me that I’d be doing a rather standard review, but the more I read the product, the more it began to light a fire in me about what the game had to offer. New mechanics, or should I say neo-retro, because it seamlessly combines great features of both old and new D&D, had me wondering just…

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The Fantasy Roots of Fan Fiction

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My fifteen year-old daughter is a voracious reader. I thought I read a lot, but I’m not even in her league. She reads fairy tales, a great deal of YA fantasy, and a smattering of horror. Just a few days ago, she asked me where to find Stephen King in our library. I wonder if that means she’s finally going to stop re-reading The Hunger Games. But mostly what she reads is fan fiction. I mean, a ton of fan fiction….

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The Top 50 Black Gate Posts in September

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I’m honestly not sure where September went. It was just here a second ago, and then…. bam. It slipped out the back like a grounded teenager with the car keys. Well, September may have been brief, but it was action packed. We published 108 blog entries, celebrating neglected fantasy of all kinds — old, new, and in between. We explained why humorous fantasy isn’t popular, examined the iconic beauty of Princess Leia, revealed the lost Sherlock Holmes story, and highlighted…

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Vintage Treasures: Down to a Sunless Sea by Lin Carter

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We’re big fans of Lin Carter here at Black Gate. He was one of the most influential figures in 20th Century fantasy, chiefly as the editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy (BAF) line of paperback reprints, the six volumes of The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories, and the groundbreaking Flashing Swords! sword & sorcery anthologies. He was also one of the hardest working professionals in the genre. Carter edited a BAF volume every single month between May 1969 and April 1974 (65…

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Four Books on Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA)

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So there are people among us that know how to use historical weapons, that can wield a real sabre, not the bendy car aerial sports variety, have fought in plate armour, jousted, even. Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA) have already filtered through into Fantasy as authors get sucked into their research — reference Miles Cameron, who fights about as much as he writes. HEMA is also going to pervade Urban Fantasy since… well swords in the city. And reader expectations…

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Future Treasures: The Madness of Cthulhu, edited by S.T. Joshi

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With all the recent discussion we’ve had on collecting H.P. Lovecraft, I thought S.T. Joshi’s latest Mythos-inspired anthology The Madness of Cthulhu, due to be released next month, might be of interest. It’s certainly got my attention. The Madness of Cthulhu collects fourteen new tales — and two reprints — inspired by Lovecraft’s masterpiece At the Mountains of Madness. Authors include Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Silverberg, Caitlin R. Kiernan, John Shirley, and Harry Turtledove. According to Joshi’s blog, this is the first of…

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When Words Are More Powerful Than Weapons: The Reader of Acheron, by Walter Rhein

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“Beneath the rule of tyrants, monsters may become heroes.” Walter Rhein gives us something different in the way of heroic fantasy – a story set in a future world where it is forbidden to learn to read, forbidden to teach people to read. In the hierarchy of Erafor, reading and writing has been outlawed for decades, though basic iconography is allowed for the sake of keeping records. The mysterious and powerful Seneschals are charged with eliminating all texts and “readers”…

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Bloody Battles, Espionage, Dark and Beautiful Prose, & Lovecraftian Horror: A Review of Karl Edward Wagner’s Dark Crusade

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You guys are going to love for me for this. So very much. Someone, somewhere might have mentioned this already, but whatever, now it’s my turn. All of the Kane books, both the novels and short story collections, have been released on Kindle for four or five bucks each, which is a mere three pounds if you live in England. It’s kind of bittersweet actually, because it means all that time I spent rummaging around in the musty corners of…

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Writer’s Workshops: Under the Black Flag

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I actually once said to a fellow writer, “The best thing you could do for art is cut off your hands and bury your typewriter.” Beyond the words themselves, it’s hard to know what’s worse about this: that I said it to someone I’m sure I liked or that I can’t remember to whom I said it. I know it was at the Clarion Writer’s Workshop in the summer of 1985, then held at Michigan State University in East Lansing….

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