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John ONeill – Black Gate

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Author: John ONeill

G.W. Thomas on Science Fiction of the 30s by Damon Knight

G.W. Thomas on Science Fiction of the 30s by Damon Knight

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Conan the Barbarian: Archie Style! From Everything Archie
#111 (May 1984). Art by Stan Goldberg and Larry Lapick.

G.W. Thomas has gradually become my favorite genre blogger. Not just because of his constant stream of content — he posts every two days at Dark Worlds Quarterly, and has been doing so for nearly a decade — but because of his endlessly zany topics. In the past few months he’s covered Haunted Houses in 50s comics, the Top Ten Ghostbreakers from Weird Tales, Werewolves of EC Comics, Space Heroes of the Golden Age, Fearless Vampire Killers of the pulps, Top Ten Fantasy Fight Scenes from 1980-1985 sword & sorcery flicks, Plant Monsters, Conan in Archie Comics, and so, so much more. For pulp and comic enthusiasts of a Certain Age, G.W. has tapped a nostalgic mother lode.

He also delves pretty deep into more serious topics of real interest, like that time he wrote a one-sentence review of every story in Damon Knight’s classic anthology Science Fiction of the 30s, complete with the original pulp illustrations.

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Galactic War, Haunted Farmhouses, and an Occupied Earth: September-October Print Magazines

Galactic War, Haunted Farmhouses, and an Occupied Earth: September-October Print Magazines

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September-October 2024 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog
Science Fiction & Fact, and the Summer issue of The Magazine of Fantasy
& Science Fiction. Cover art by Shutterstock, NASA, and Mondolithic Studios

The big news this month is the arrival of the new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, after a nearly 8-month hiatus. In the pages of the new issue, publisher Gordon van Gelder reports that “Ongoing production problems have led us to skip the Spring issue and to switch to a quarterly schedule.” The new issue is cover-dated Summer 2024.

It’s a huge relief to have F&SF back on schedule — and the new issue looks terrific, with new fiction from Albert Chu, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Esther Friesner, Deborah L. Davitt, Phoenix Alexander, and lots more. The September-October issues of Asimov’s SF and Analog don’t disappoint either, with new stories from Naomi Kritzer, James Patrick Kelley, Robert Reed, Alice Towey, Stephanie Feldman, Anita Vijayakumar, Robert R. Chase, Susan Shwartz, Ray Nayler, Adam-Troy Castro, Wil McCarthy, Mar Vincent, Kedrick Brown, Tony Ballantyne, James Van Pelt, Mark W. Teidemann, and lots more.

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New Treasures: Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

New Treasures: Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea by Rebecca Thorne

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Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea (Bramble, May 7, 2024). Cover by Irene Huang

I had a few bucks in my pocket during my last trip to Barnes & Noble last week, and came home with some magazines and two books: a handsome reprint of The Black Prism by Brent Weeks, and the breakout cozy fantasy by Rebecca Thorne, Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea.

I’d love to be able to tell you what I thought of Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea. Unfortunately, I can’t. My son stole it. He stayed up reading all night last Saturday. He hasn’t done that since he was eleven.

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Robot Avatars, Criminal Combines, and a Sisterhood of Space Pilots: July-August 2024 Print SF Magazines

Robot Avatars, Criminal Combines, and a Sisterhood of Space Pilots: July-August 2024 Print SF Magazines

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July-August 2024 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction & Fact.
Cover art by John Sumrow (for “Sisters of the Flare”) and Shutterstock

Might as well get the bad news out of the way up front. There’s still no new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but we hope for better news next month.

Unfortunately, that’s the same thing we said two months ago, and two months before that. We’re now 2/3rds of the way through 2024, and F&SF has published only a single issue. Magazine publishing is hard, especially these days, so if they can get back on track by the end of the year, all will certainly be forgiven. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, there’s plenty of great fiction in the print magazines we do have in hand, the July-August issues of Asimov’s SF and Analog, including new stories from Greg Egan, James Van Pelt, Susan Palwick, R. Garcia y Robertson, Leah Cypess, Genevieve Valentine, Stephen Case, Alex Irvine, Michael F. Flynn, Alice Towey, Thoraiya Dyer, and lots more.

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Vintage Treasures: The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H.P. Lovecraft

Vintage Treasures: The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H.P. Lovecraft

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The Doom That Came to Sarnath (Ballantine Books, November 1976). Cover by Murray Tinkelman

H.P. Lovecraft, creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, was one of the greatest horror writers of the 20th Century. But horror wasn’t all he produced, as editor Lin Carter adroitly pointed out in the introduction to The Doom That Came to Sarnath.

Those readers who know only the Cthulhu Mythos stories, know only a single side of Lovecraft… the Cthulhu Mythos, while completely his own invention, was constructed along the guidelines established by earlier writers whom he greatly admired… But far beyond his borrowing of basic techniques from Machen and Chambers, Lovecraft is more deeply indebted to the great Anglo-Irish fantasist, Lord Dunsany… not content to make up his own geography, Dunsany invented the religion to which his imaginary worlds paid worship. An extremely clever, even brilliant, idea, and one which has been used by many writers after him. Lovecraft used this theme as the basis for his own Cthulhu Mythos.

As a young reader, Lovecraft was enthralled by Dunsany’s superb fiction. Many of his earliest tales… are Dunsanian in texture and color… Last year I edited a volume of the most Dunsanian of these tales, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath… I would have liked to have included all the fiction from Lovecraft’s “Dunsanian period” in that single book, but the size of the volume would have been impractical. Hence, this second collection.

The Doom That Came to Sarnath contains 14 stories and poems from early in Lovecraft’s career (1919-1925), plus half a dozen later tales, including his famous collaboration with Harry Houdini, “Imprisoned With the Pharaohs.” Although many of the tales — including the title story — are deliciously macabre, there’s very little horror here. It is, as Lin Carter promised, a surprise and delight for those who know Lovecraft only as a horror writer.
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Vintage Treasures: Frontera by Lewis Shiner

Vintage Treasures: Frontera by Lewis Shiner

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Frontera (Baen Books, August 1984). Cover by Vincent Di Fate

I first discovered Lewis Shiner in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies, where he was a regular, and one of my favorite contributors. His first published story, “Tinker’s Damn,” appeared in the fifth issue of Charles Ryan’s Galileo magazine in October 1977, and he followed that with dozens more all through the 80s and 90s in places likes The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Twilight Zone Magazine, Omni, and especially Asimov’s Science Fiction.

His first novel Frontera, the tale of a high-risk expedition to a supposedly abandoned Martian colony, was published as a paperback original in what we used to call the Year of Big Brother, 1984 (that’s a George Orwell reference, for all you young folks). It was nominated for both the Philip K. Dick Award and the Nebula Award for Best Novel, and was followed by perhaps his most famous novel, Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988), which garnered another Nebula nom.

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New Treasures: Ragged Maps by Ian R. MacLeod

New Treasures: Ragged Maps by Ian R. MacLeod

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Ragged Maps (Subterranean Press,
September 15, 2023). Cover by Dominic Harman

Ian R. MacLeod’s novels include The Light Ages (2003) and sequel The House of Storms (2005), but his greatest acclaim has come from his short fiction. He’s produced no less than seven short story collections since 1996, including Voyages by Starlight (1996), Frost on Glass (2015), and the World Fantasy Award nominee Breathmoss and Other Exhalations (2004).

His latest collection, Ragged Maps, was released by Subterranean Press in a hardcover limited edition last year, and I finally got the chance to curl up with it this week. In contains fifteen stories, including an original novella and the Sturgeon Award nominee “The Visitor from Taured.” In his Locus Online review Paul Di Filippo called MacLeod’s prose “Just gorgeous… elegant, complex, mysterious, empathetic, melancholy, mystical, and, somehow, quintessentially British… he’s a peer and heir to Aldiss, Peake, Ballard, Priest, and Moorcock.”

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Vintage Treasures: Tangled Webs by Steve Mudd

Vintage Treasures: Tangled Webs by Steve Mudd

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Tangled Webs (Questar/Popular Library, August 1989). Cover by Blas Gallego

There was a time, not so many years ago, when my reading was spontaneous. My wife would mention an intriguing mystery she’d just finished, I’d pick it up for a minute, and the next thing you know I’ve spent two hours with my feet up on the washing machine. I could get lost in a book in a bookstore. I would miss stops on the bus. Once I was listening to the audiobook  of John Grisham’s The Pelican Brief during a nighttime road trip to Canada, and by the time that damn tape ended I’d missed the turnoff for Detroit by about two hours and was deep in northern Michigan. I still smell pines trees whenever anyone mentions pelicans. True story.

Anyway, the sad truth is these days my reading is by necessity much more planned. I have commitments that will take many months — to publishers, authors seeking cover blurbs, and writers looking for manuscript feedback. On top of that, there are new releases I dearly want to read, and only so many hours in the day.

I can’t let myself get distracted by the many tantalizing old books that pass through my hands. Even when they have cyborg assassins right there on the first page, like Steve Mudd’s forgotten 80s paperback Tangled Webs.
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Disembodied Heads, War Robots, and Crime Hives: May-June 2024 Print SF Magazines

Disembodied Heads, War Robots, and Crime Hives: May-June 2024 Print SF Magazines

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May-June 2024 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Covers
by Kurt Huggins (for “Uncle Roy’s Computer Repairs and Used Robot Parts”) and Shutterstock.

There’s no sign of the new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction this month, which is a little concerning. Distribution issues caused the January/February issue to be renamed “Winter 2024” and ship significantly late, but now that spring and gone and summer is upon us, I’d hoped to at least hear news of the next issue. Their website still shows the Winter issue, and their Facebook Page hasn’t been updated since December. These are not promising omens.

Fortunately there’s plenty of great fiction in the print magazines we do have in hand, the May-June issues of Analog and Asimov’s SF, including new stories from Rich Larson, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Christopher Rowe, William Preston, Amal Singh, Martin L. Shoemaker, Edward M. Lerner, Sean Monaghan, Aimee Ogden, Richard A. Lovett, Mark W. Tiedemann, and Robert Silverberg.

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Future Treasures: Vinyl Wonderland by Mark Rigney

Future Treasures: Vinyl Wonderland by Mark Rigney

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Vinyl Wonderland (Castle Bridge Media, June 25, 2024). Cover artist unknown

Mark Rigney will be familiar to most long-time readers at Black Gate. He wrote his first blog post for us (Portals: A Writer Blogs About Process) more than a dozen years ago, and never really stopped, with more than a hundred articles here over the last decade. We published several of his excellent short stories as part of our Black Gate Online Fiction library, starting with “The Trade,” and serialized his complete novel In the Wake of Sister Blue back in 2015.

Mark is perhaps best known to Black Gate readers as the author of the Renner & Quist novels — The Skates, Sleeping Bear, Check-Out Time, and Bonesy — featuring unlikely occult investigators Reverend Renner and retired investigator Dale Quist. Fellow BG blogger William Patrick Maynard called them “Funny, moving, enlightening, entertaining – Mark Rigney’s Renner & Quist series is in a class of its own. The recommendations come no stronger.”

His latest novel Vinyl Wonderland, on sale in three weeks from Castle Bridge Media, has all the markings of a breakout book. It’s a terrifically twisty mystery with a fantastical bent, and easily the best novel I’ve read so far this year.

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