By Janet Morris and Chris Morris This is an excerpt from The Sacred Band, by Janet Morris and Chris Morris, presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Janet Morris and Chris Morris, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. The Sacred Band is available in hardcover, trade paper; and in Kindle, Nook, and other electronic formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, I Tunes and other booksellers. Shock Troops of the Gods…
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Storytelling, great storytelling, exists on two levels. It tells us the particular story, of course, but it also tells us the Big Ones. It asks the great questions: about ourselves, our relationships to each other and the universe, about life and death and love and fate. The Odyssey, being great storytelling in addition to beautiful poetry, grapples with the biggest of these: what is this humanity of ours? What does it mean? Odysseus wanders, definitely lost, and in the course…
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By John C. Hocking This is a complete work of fiction presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of John C. Hocking and New Epoch Press, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2013 by New Epoch Press. It was almost midnight, my feet hurt, my robes were crusted with desert grit, and the guards wouldn’t let us into the city. It’s never easy to enter the city of Frekore…
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Somehow, when I was growing up, I missed Witch World. Some of the books in the series were always around, as I remember it, in my local libraries and bookstores, but I don’t think I ever read one — if only because I always try to read a series in order, and finding Witch World itself was not always easy. Somewhere along the line, though, I picked up a used copy, and set it aside to be read later. As…
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Arak has had his share of sea serpents, vampires, Lovecraftian cave-beasties, demons, and devils. What was this comic lacking? Legendary creatures from Greek myth, of course! So with issue 10, Arak and Valda make a side trip to Mount Olympus. And there are some surprises in store for both of them… We open on very human terrain, in medias res. Arak and Valda, on horseback, are being ambushed by Byzantine soldiers. Last issue, we left them adrift at sea after…
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And so we come to two of the most influential and prolific fantasy writers of the 20th Century, Andre Norton and Michael Moorcock, as we follow intrepid literary explorers Mordicai and Tim Callahan on their voyage of discovery through Appendix N at Tor.com. Tim and Mordicai have been none too gentle to some of the writers in Appendix N, including L. Sprague de Camp, Gardner Fox, and even Roger Zelazny. But in Norton and Moorcock, they find authors they can…
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By Dave Gross This is an excerpt from the upcoming Pathfinder Tales novel King of Chaos by Dave Gross, presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Paizo Publishing and Dave Gross, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. Copyright 2013 by Paizo Publishing, LLC. Chapter One: The Watchtower Oparal “Faster.” Bastiel lowered his horn. His sooty mane whipped my faceplate as I rose in the stirrups to lean over…
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You never know when you’ll find something fantastical to write about. A little while ago, I started an ongoing project of reading through the novels of Iris Murdoch. This came out of an appreciation of A.S. Byatt’s fiction, which led to me reading her study of Murdoch’s early novel, Degrees of Freedom. That book in turn led me to start in on Murdoch. I loved her first novel, Under the Net, which is something like what might have happened if…
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And so we come to Fritz Leiber, in our continuing exploration of Lester del Rey’s Classic Library of Science Fiction series. The Best of Fritz Leiber, published in 1974, was the second in the line, following The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum. Unlike Weinbaum and many of the authors who would follow him, Leiber was well known — even a star — to contemporary SF readers in 1974, thanks chiefly to his popular Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books. Which…
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Over at Tor.com, the intrepid Mordicai Knode and Tim Callahan have been conducting dangerous psychoreality experiments, just like William Hurt in Altered States. I don’t expect you to get that reference, because Altered States came out, like, a billion years ago. But trust me, it was wild. William Hurt locks himself in a sensory deprivation tank until he turns into some kind of glowing protoplasm. And Blair Brown got naked. A lot. Drew Barrymore played their 4-year old daughter, if…
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