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Quatro-Decadal Review: Weird Tales, November 1989, edited by John Betancourt, George H. Scithers, and Darrell Schweitzer

Quatro-Decadal Review: Weird Tales, November 1989, edited by John Betancourt, George H. Scithers, and Darrell Schweitzer

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Weird Tales, Fall 1989 (Terminus Publishing). Cover by J.K. Potter

There has been quite the gap in my reviews. I’ve been high-centered on Weird Tales. Many factors played a role in this — mostly that it is not a small magazine by any stretch. Then there is the fact that I read it in early 2023, got distracted by other things, and had to re-read it to write about it.

As readers of these reviews know, I don’t hold back re: spoilers for 35-year old stories. New readers, be warned!

Frequent readers will also recall that I often hypothesize on the thoughts and drives of the editors, but in this case I don’t have to hypothesize — my friends, we live in the future and I was able to get the straight dope right from The Grey Eminence himself: Darrell Schweitzer.

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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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The Space Unicorn Was Caitlin

The Space Unicorn Was Caitlin

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This blog post wasn’t supposed to be about our late daughter, Caitlin.

This was supposed to be a lovely list of awesome things we’ve published in the 10 years of Uncanny Magazine.

But right now, and honestly for quite some time, everything for us is about Caitlin.

For those of you unfamiliar with us…

A decade ago, Publishers/Editors-in-Chief Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas (that’s us) launched Uncanny Magazine, an online science fiction and fantasy magazine that features passionate SF/F fiction and poetry, gorgeous prose, provocative nonfiction, and a deep investment in diverse and inclusive SF/F culture — a magazine that believes there’s still plenty of room in the genre for tales that make you feel.

And Caitlin was with us every step of the way.

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Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Best-of Volume 4 Anthology Now Available

Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Best-of Volume 4 Anthology Now Available

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The Best Of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 4 (June 6, 2024). Cover Art by Karolína Wellartová

After gathering the cold fire and the breath of virtuous fish we were finally able to forge mithril and orichalchum into a fine mesh, through which we strained the very aether of imagination and distilled it into Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Best-of Volume 4.  From issues #25 to #32 we bring you:

Sixteen stories
Ten poems
Twenty-seven illustrations; and
An essay on the Sword and Sorcery genre by Howard Andrew Jones

It was a labor of love and with copies sent to the contributors and the Kickstarter backers, we are ready to unveil it to the world! Order copies directly from Amazon.

In other news, we are open for fiction and poetry submissions for the month of July, so if you got it, send it!

Adrian Simmons is an editor for Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, check out their Best-of Volume 3  Best-of Volume 4, or support them on Patreon!

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Hardboiled Manila – Jo Gar

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Hardboiled Manila – Jo Gar

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Several hardboiled books were not actually novels at the start. They were multi-part serials in the Pulp magazines of the day. Perhaps the most famous of these is Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon, which ran for five installments from September 1929 through January of 1930. Likewise, Ned Beaumont’s four-part adventure became The Glass Key. The same happened with The Continental Op. And it wasn’t just Hammett. Paul Cain’s The Fast One is arguably the finest hardboiled novel ever – and it was a serial.

Raoul Whitfield’s The Laughing Death enthralled readers for nine issues in a row. A five-issue story became Green Ice; and Ben Jardinn spent three issues working on a murder in Death in a Bowl. The author of several novels for juvenile boys, Whitfield actually wrote another hardboiled novella, except it wasn’t collected and issued separately, so it’s not regarded as a book. And this was the only serial featuring his wonderful island detective, Jo Gar.

WARNING – THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!
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Beating Heart & Battle Axes – New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine Forges a Book

Beating Heart & Battle Axes – New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine Forges a Book

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Beating Hearts & Battle Axes – A Romantic Sword & Sorcery Anthology seeking funding, championed by New Edge Sword & Sorcery magazine. Cover Art is by M.E. Morgan

New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine, championed by Oliver Brackenbury, has emerged over the last few years to provide a market with “love for the classics, and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling.”  Black Gate has featured the crowdfunding for and reviews of the initial volumes (link).  Today we highlight a crowdfunding endeavor that is in progress now, set to end on July 20th: a collection of six stories called Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes. Starting with this new anthology, Oliver Brackenbury (Publisher) & Jay Wolf (Editor) will carry that same approach into the Brackenbury Books lineup. It’s a bold meeting of Sword & Sorcery and the current zeitgeist in fantasy publishing: Romantasy. Some of the stories get quite spicy, too!

Check out the Beating Heats & Battle Axes campaign now!

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Dime Detective – August, 1941

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Dime Detective – August, 1941

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

 

Black Mask’s major competition came in the form of Dime Detective Magazine, which touted itself as “twice as good – for half the price” (Black Mask cost 20 cents at the time; though the price would shortly drop to 15 cents, in part due to Dime Detective’s success at the cheaper cost).

Editor Kenneth White (the same mentioned above) was instructed to lure as many writers from Black Mask as he could, paying an extra penny a word as enticement. And with a going rate of one to two cents for pulp writers (Black Mask’s three cents a word was indicative of its standing and quality in the field), the four cent rate made a significant difference to writers. As the prolific Erle Stanley Gardner supposedly replied to observations that he always seemed to use his hero’s last bullet to knock off the story’s antagonist:

“At three cents a word, every time I say ‘Bang’ in the story I get three cents. If you think I’m going to finish the gun battle while my hero still has fifteen cents worth of unexploded ammunition in his gun, you’re nuts.”

Writers were forbidden from doing novel serializations (The Maltese Falcon was first a serial) and were also instructed to create their own characters, which could not appear elsewhere, for the magazine. The onslaught was successful, with many of the era’s most popular writers switching to Dime Detective. Carroll John Daly (who brought the iconic Race Williams with him), Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel and Norbert Davis (whose humorous stories were frequently rejected by Shaw but who flourished at his new home) were among those lured to Dime Detective.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Rex Stout’s ‘The Mother of Invention’

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Rex Stout’s ‘The Mother of Invention’

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

If you read more than just this Pulp series of mine each summer, you know that I am a gargantuan Nero Wolfe fan. It’s my favorite mystery series, and I have written a lot of fiction and non-fiction about Wolfe, and Archie Goodwin.

Rex Stout wrote several novels and many short stories, before the first Wolfe novel dropped in 1934. Of course, there was no looking back after Fer de Lance.

He placed “A Professional Recall” in the December, 1912 issue of The Black Cat magazine. “Pamfret and Peace” followed the next month. There would be three more over the next few years.

The Black Cat was founded by Herman Umbstaetter in 1895. He had gained and lost a fortune before managing to fund his own magazine in Baltimore. It was not a Pulp, and was about the size of the Dime Novels of the day (about 6” x 9”). Umbstaetter encouraged new writers, and paid based on the quality of the story, not by the word. His wife did the early covers.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ya Gotta Ask – Reprise

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Ya Gotta Ask – Reprise

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Nine years ago this past January, I wrote a post here titled, Ya Gotta Ask. I felt like that one could use a bit of polish and expansion, and it would still be a pretty good post. So, here’s a revised version, as the Monday morning column gets ready to kick off another Summer of Pulp with A (Black) Gat in the Hand.

One of the cool things about Black Gate is that there are a bunch of authors who blog here. These are Writers with a capital ‘W’. I have worked hard to become a pretty good blogger, and I think I’ve succeeded. I’ve got a couple awards to back that up. I’ve published some short stories and non-fiction, as well. But I still think of myself as a lower case ‘w’ writer. I am working towards capitalizing that letter, but as any Writer will tell you, you just gotta keep working at it.

Now, some authors here at Black Gate can (and have) given you advice on how to write a novel, or get a book published: be it here, or on their own blogs or other sites. Follow their advice, make it happen, and then you can be a Writer too (a novel isn’t the defining element: I’m just using it as a benchmark for this essay). I’m going to make a suggestion on how you can become a writer, like me. I know, I know: you’re all atingle.

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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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