I saw two movies in the late afternoon and evening of the Sunday before last (the 27th). Both were documentaries. You’d think that the first one would have had the more obvious science-fiction content, being a biography of an actor who rose to fame playing a character on perhaps the best-known science-fiction TV show of all time — while the second film was an in-depth examination of what sounds like the most mundane substance in the world. This did not…
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Back in January, I reviewed the first three books of T. C. Rypel’s Gonji series. Though thirty-odd years old, the books are exemplars of what heroic fantasy should be: exciting, wildly inventive, well-written, and — above all — starring a heroic protagonist. Exiled half-caste samurai Gonji Sabatake, try as he might, is unable to avoid fighting evil or behaving courageously. This stuff is why I still read S&S. While the first three books (actually, one big book chopped into three parts…
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Graham Greene once said that the books that influence us the most are not the ones that we “seriously” or systematically read in adulthood, but are rather those first books we seek out in our youth and that we read for the simple love of reading. He wrote, “In later life, we admire, we are entertained, we may modify some views we already hold, but we are more likely to find in books merely a confirmation of what is in…
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There he was; a sliver of midnight set against the deeper black of the room behind him. The Black Knight. When he moved, he moved with the easy lope of the master, the practised ease of the warrior. There was silence in the moonlit hall, silence save for the cold metallic chink of his armor and the hammering of my own heart. He was twice my height, broad of shoulder and clad entirely in black armor. A sword, five feet…
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Browsing about the Internet recently, I stumbled on something that interested me. Several things, actually. Specifically, the results at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database of various Locus audience polls; more specifically, the results of the all-time polls in the fantasy field. I was struck by how some things stayed constant across the years, and how some other things have changed. Now, it’s important to be wary of making overly-sweeping statements about the fantasy field based on these polls. These are…
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I hear reports from several quarters about an upcoming anthology of great interest to Black Gate readers: The Mammoth Book of Warriors and Wizardry, a generous collection of swords & sorcery edited by uber-editor Sean Wallace. This is a reprint collection with contributions from Black Gate writers Matthew David Surridge (his popular S&S epic “The Word of Azrael” from Black Gate 14), James Enge (“The Singing Spear,” one of my favorite Morlock stories), Chris Willrich, Jay Lake, and Richard Parks, as…
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I, like many folk of my age, category, and interest set, have many fond memories of Waldenbooks. I mean, as a kid there were basically two things you could be guaranteed were fun at any U.S. mall: Kay-Bee Toys and Waldenbooks. They were two oases in a desert of clothes outlets and anchor stores that your mother dragged you to on far too many occasions. Still, being able to go to those two stores somehow made it all worthwhile and I weep…
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When I started my blog (Swords & Sorcery: A Blog), one of my goals was to force myself to read new fantasy. I knew I’d get bored pretty quickly if all I did was write about books and stories I’d read many times. As a fan, it’s too easy to allow oneself to get comfortably caught up in a cycle of reading and rereading the same old dusty stack of Howard, Leiber, and Moorcock. My newer go-to books include Norton,…
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One of the interesting things about going back to the beginning of any tradition is seeing how things might have gone. Seeing, that is, possibilities unexplored and roads not taken. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of what, in retrospect, is an earlier stage of evolution. Sometimes there’s a sense of a missed chance. And then sometimes you can see why things went the way they did. I’ve written here before about my fascination with underexplored elements in 80s fantasy. In…
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By David C. Smith This is a complete work of fiction presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of David C. Smith and New Epoch Press, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2014 by David C. Smith. For Retired U.S. Army SFC Robert Price, Sr. 1. The Outlander We bargain for the graves we lie in. — James Russell Lowell The Vision of Sir Launfal Bodor moved quickly, faster…
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