Search Results for: anna smith

A Year of Weirdbook

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Not all that long ago, Douglass Draa was the Online Editor for Weird Tales, maintaining a lively Facebook presence and posting numerous highly readable articles on the website (which, sadly, have now been removed.) Although the magazine has essentially been dead since 2014, Doug kept the Weird Tales name alive as best he could, and I frequently found myself wondering what someone with that much energy could do with more editorial control. We found out in 2015 when the much-loved…

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R.A. Lafferty, the Past Master of Science Fiction

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R.A Lafferty is one of my absolute favorite classic SF writers. Though I’ve never read any of his novels. Yeah, I know that sounds weird. But Lafferty is remembered today mostly for his brilliant short fiction, collected in priceless collections like Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970), Strange Doings (1972), and Lafferty in Orbit (1991). And his novels… well, they’re not so well remembered. There are a lot of theories about this. In his wonderful SF biography Past Masters (the title of…

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The May Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Lots of great new fiction in May, including new stories by Mark Lawrence, Nicholas Kaufmann, Kelly Robson, John Shirley, Naomi Novik, Erica L. Satifka, Steven J. Dines, Lynne Jamneck, Katharine Duckett, Michael Washburn, Robert M. Waugh, and many others. The new kid on the block this month is Vastarien from Grimscribe Press, a 284-page journal “of critical study and creative response to the corpus of Thomas Ligotti as well as associated authors and ideas.” The first issue includes contributions from…

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The April Fantasy Magazine Rack

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Lots of great reading for fiction fans in April, including new stories by Black Gate writers John R. Fultz, Mike Resnick, and Nina Kiriki Hoffman, plus Sarah Pinsker, Cassandra Khaw, Nalo Hopkinson, Rob Vagle, Ray Vukcevich, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Marissa Lingen, Sarah Monette, Will McIntosh, Timothy Mudie, Adam-Troy Castro, Rich Larson, Jiang Bo, O’Neil De Noux, Jerry Oltion, Steve Perry, and lots more. The big news this month is the return of Pulphouse in a brand new quarterly, Pulphouse Fiction…

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By Crom: Arthurian Elements in the Conan Canon

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John Teehan, in The Complete Guide to Writing Fantasy: Volume One, challenges the reader to think of their favorite contemporary fantasy novels. And we’re talking Tolkien-onwards here, not just the past few years. Then he gives a list and says it would be difficult to think of a book that didn’t have any of the five themes on the list. He is making the point that the Arthurian legend, largely brought to popular culture by Thomas Malory, was an interweaving…

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The Late March Fantasy Magazine Rack

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The big magazine news in March is the arrival of the first issue of the most exciting new adventure fantasy periodical in years — Tales From the Magician’s Skull, edited by our very own Howard Andrew Jones and packed with writers and characters familiar to readers of Black Gate, including a brand new Morlock tale by James Enge, a Gaunt and Bone story from Chris Willrich, a graveyard fable from John C. Hocking, “There Was an Old Fat Spider” by C….

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Hugo Nomination Thoughts, 2018

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Time for my annual post on what I’m thinking about for Hugo nominations. As ever, I’ll caution that I have read a lot of short fiction, but that I am less up on the other categories. I have seen a fair quantity of movies, too, however. Let me reiterate something I said last year – though I participate with a lot of enjoyment in Hugo nomination and voting every year, I am philosophically convinced that there is no such thing…

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The Late January Fantasy Magazine Rack

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I think my favorite read so far this month has been Alter Ego #150, the special 100-page Stan Lee issue, with a rare interview with Stan the Man conducted in the 1980s, a look at Stan’s non-Marvel work, and tons more. The January fiction mags feature stories by Nisi Shawl, Nick Mamatas, Adam-Troy Castro, Sarah Pinsker, Laurie Tom, David Afsharirad, Patricia Russo, and many others. Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in late January (links will bring you to…

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The December Fantasy Magazine Rack

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The latest crop of magazines includes brand new fiction by BG blogger and Heroic Fantasy Quarterly editor Adrian Simmons, plus Natalia Theodoridou, Lettie Prell, Cassandra Khaw, Mari Ness, Stephen Case, Nin Harris, and many more. Here’s the complete list of magazines that won my attention in early December (links will bring you to magazine websites). Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine — editor Tom Dullemond selects stories by Adrian Simmons, David Versace, Jennifer Hykes, Josh Pearce, DA Xiaolin Spires, Freya Marske, Rae White, and others…

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