When I was growing up, everybody tried to tell me what to read. My parents wanted to me read “normal” books, not “trashy” books with Frank Frazetta covers featuring scantily-clad maidens, sword-wielding barbarians, or hideous monsters. My teachers wanted me to read Modern Literature — and they made sure I was exposed to as much as possible — although my favorites were Hamlet and Beowulf. In college my instructors pushed Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Carver toward me and I read…
We’re celebrating a major publishing event at the Black Gate rooftop headquarters today: the arrival of Seven Sorcerers, the third novel in John R. Fultz’s Books of the Shaper series. When Seven Princes, the first book in the series, arrived in January 2012, it marked the debut of a major new fantasy talent. Seven Kings cemented that reputation, and over the next two years, John graduated from promising new novelist to full-fledged literary star. The critical acclaim for the first two books…
By E.E. Knight This is a complete work of fiction presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of E.E. Knight and New Epoch Press, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2004 by Pitch-Black LLC. Have you heard the tale, O Exalted One, of how the old Myrhyran Spire in Dinhun came to be called the “Tower of Screams” and, even down to this modern and skeptical day, thought accursed ground?…
The top article on the Black Gate blog last month was our look at Mike Resnick and Robert Garcia’s new anthology Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. (A few weeks later Robert Garcia wrote his first Saturday blog post for us, a fond look back at The Pulp Art of Virgil Finlay. Do we bring the heavy hitters, or what?) Second on the list was E.E. Knight’s open letter to Amy Farrah Fowler, a character on The Big Bang Theory, on her…
I’m always excited to find a new author, especially one with a long back catalogue for me to plunge into. With 26 novels to his name, Steven Brust is one of those finds. When I first started blogging about swords & sorcery I spent some time looking around for newer books and series (newer for me meaning anything written after 1984). Again and again, people suggested Steven Brust’s Dragaeran Empire series. Without reading too much about it I learned the main…
Last week I noted that Tor’s promising that they’ll be publishing an English translation of Liu Cixin’s Three-Body Trilogy, a highly successful work of Chinese science fiction. Tor says that this will be the first publication of a science fiction novel from mainland China. But, as the statement implies, it won’t be the first Chinese-language sf novel translated into English. You can take a look in the comments of the linked article at Tor for examples; as it happens, I’ve…
It’s been nearly three years since The Journal of Unlikely Entomology made its first appearance, and while this multi-legged publication focused initially on that fertile but narrow intersection of spec fic and bugs, the magazine has since branched out, changed its name, and adopted a rolling series of varied themes (the latest being the upcoming Journal of Unlikely Cryptography, now accepting submissions). Unlikely Story pays pro rates for fiction, a rarity these days, and manages to make the stories they…
By Vaughn Heppner This is a complete work of fiction presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Vaughn Heppner and New Epoch Press, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2013 by New Epoch Press. The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed…
I missed nearly all the seminal pop culture of my youth. When in eighth grade Andy H. asked me which I liked better, AC/DC or Pink Floyd, I honestly couldn’t answer the question. I was also much too tongue-tied to ask Andy if he’d ever heard of Doctor Who, which I’m quite sure he had not. Anyway. One of the major events that I missed was Planet Of the Apes. True, Planet is from 1968, and I was only born…
James Reasoner, author of Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West and The Civil War Battle Series, weighs in on John C. Hocking’s newest Archivist tale, published here September 29: “Vestments of Pestilence” is a new sword-and-sorcery story by John C. Hocking, author of Conan and the Emerald Lotus, and what an absolute joy it is to read… The Archivist and Lucella have returned to civilization only to find themselves immediately drawn into a clash between two members of the…