I never really fully understood what Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity Rainbow was about. Much like everyone else. As one critic put it, I doubt that anyone could account for everything going on in Gravity’s Rainbow, even Pynchon himself, although I suppose he has an edge on the rest of us.
Now I move on to the fourth volume in the chronological reprinting of Semi Dual stories from Steeger Books. I am holding off on the three Semi Dual serials they reprinted that appeared toward the end of the series.
I have ‘landing pages’ here at Black Gate which I update when I add a new post to some frequent/favored topic. The Robert E. Howard one is the most active. And I have them for John D. MacDonald, Nero Wolfe, Douglas Adams (with help from friends), and Sherlock Holmes on Screen. Steamed was a site-wide video game column I thought up in 2020 that never caught…got traction.
The Children of Llyr (Ballantine Adult Fantasy #33, August 1971). Cover by David Johnston This latest entry in my series of essays about mostly obscure SF and Fantasy from the ’70s and ’80s looks at a novel published in one of the most celebrated publishing series of the early ’70s.
Well here we are again. For this new watch-a-thon, I’m returning to sci-fi, and in particular the elements that I love about sci-fi — forget about story and thoughtful metaphors for the human condition, I just want spaceships and robots and hardware.
Tor Double #31 was originally published in April 1991. The proto-Tor Double, which included two stories by Keith Laumer, was the only volume up to this point to include content from a single author. This volume, with two stories by Gordon R.
Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure by Richard A. Lupoff (Ace, 1968) and A Guide to Barsoom by John Flint Roy (Ballantine Books, January 1976). Covers by Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo Among my prized possessions are these two books.
An interesting New Pulp hero is Midnight Guardian, created by John C. Bruening. There are three novels so far, with a fourth announced at PulpFest 2025. Set in the 1930s, this is a good series. All the books are published by Flinch! Books with covers by Thomas Gianni or Douglas Klauba.
Every October, I perform a ritual that I suspect many of you also observe — I grab a handful of books off the shelf and spend the Halloween month reading the scary stuff, always trying to get in a “classic” or two that I’ve missed along the way.
Good afterevenmorn, Readers! I have been (over)thinking about the panels I participated in during this year’s Can*Con. What I can remember of them, anyway. I get so nervous before any kind of public speaking that the events often just get blanked out in my memory.
Here is another review of one of the “Big Book of” volumes edited by Otto Penzler of Mysterious Bookstores and published by Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, part of Penguin Random House. This time, it’s The Big Book of Adventure Stories (2011), which is about 875 pages with almost 50 stories broken up into 11 sections.
So, Paul Bishop is a friend of mine, and he wrote the very first post in Black Gate’s award-nominated Discovering Robert E. Howard. He talked about Howard’s boxing stories. Before those Pulps dried up, Howard wrote prolifically for them, with Sailor Steve Costigan his most popular creation.
The Solomon Kane Companion by Fred Blosser (Pulp Hero Press, June 17, 2025) If you’re familiar with Robert E. Howard Fandom, you already know who Fred Blosser is. I first encountered his work back in the early 1970s, when he was writing articles and reviews for Marvel Comics’ Savage Sword of Conan magazine.
Well here we are again. For this new watch-a-thon, I’m returning to sci-fi, and in particular the elements that I love about sci-fi — forget about story and thoughtful metaphors for the human condition, I just want spaceships and robots and hardware.
I recently picked up a complete set of a sadly short-lived fanzine, Robert Weinberg’s The Weird Tales Collector. This fanzine ran six issues from 1977 to 1980. All are 5.5- by 8.5-inches, 32 pages long, and saddle-stitched.
Tor Double #30 contains Poul Anderson’s third and final appearance and was originally published in February 1991. He is joined by Steve Popkes with a story original to this volume and which has not been reprinted.
For this installment, we look at a selection of tales from The Best Fantasy Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (1985), edited by Edward L. Ferman. “Pages from a Young Girl’s Journal,” a novelette by Robert Aickman First published in F&SF, February 1973 Read the story in the original magazine here A young girl records her travels in Italy, where she and her family are hosted by a Contessa.
In 2006 and 2008, Tor books sought a revival of Sword & Planet fiction with two books by S. M. Stirling. It didn’t quite work out but the readers got some interesting results, including a book that is now in my top ten of S&P novels.
I recently picked up the revised and expanded edition of Gideon Cain: Demon Hunter, edited by Van Allen Plexico and published by his White Rocket Books in 2022. The first version came out in 2010 from Airship 27 with seven stories by various authors.
Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction , Volumes 1-3 (Ansible Press, December 13, 2023, November 22, 2024, and October 21, 2025). Covers by Tithi Luadthong, Xiaofan Zhang, and Pascal Blanché I was delighted to see (on S.
Will Murray recently came out with his third book on The Shadow: Knight of Darkness: The Legend of The Shadow. This follows his prior books on The Shadow: Master of Mystery: The Rise of The Shadow and Dark Avenger: The Strange Saga of The Shadow .All these come from Odyssey Publications.
It’s been August since I shared What I’ve Been Listening To. My apologies for depriving you! And you know that I listen to audiobooks every single day: Work, home, car, walking, bedtime: I’m constantly listening to them.
Ten years ago to the month (I started this in October), I wrote about Terry Brooks’ groundbreaking The Sword of Shannara (1977), and declared that the joy I got reading the book the first time around was something I couldn’t recapture.
#4 – Predator 2 (1990) Strong link, or tenuous as all hell? Fairly bloody strong. What’s the link? This is the one that threw the chum into the sea of nerds. What’s it all about? Stephen Hopkins, British music video auteur, fresh off his bonkers stint on the Nightmare on Elm Street series, with the fabulously daft Dream Child, was handed this and must have thought to himself, ‘I’m gonna make the most 1990s film ever 1990-ed in the year...
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John Varley makes his third and final appearance in the Tor Double series in volume #29, which was originally published in January 1991. Ian Watson makes his only appearance in this volume. The Persistence of Vision was originally published in F&SF in March 1978.
What do James A. Corey, George RR Martin, and Mary Robinette Kowal have in common? Like thousands of their peers, each had a mentor help them navigate the wild world of publishing in some way, shape, or form.
Today, we come back from our excursion into the realm of Space Opera to our home territory of Sword & Planet fiction. One of the most unique S&P series I’ve ever encountered is the four-book series by Jack Vance (1916 – 2013) generally called the Planet of Adventure series.
A new fanzine devoted to Edgar Rice Burroughs is RevERBerate. The first issue came out in May 2025 and is 48 pages printed on high-quality, glossy pages, perfect-bound with cardstock covers. It’s edited and published by Scott Tracy Griffin.
It’s been a while since I’ve taken a look at a ’70s science fiction novel in this space, and this seems a good book to feature. It’s rather better than some of the books I’ve written about, though it has, as far as I can tell, never been reprinted.
I had previously posted on the excellent Illustration magazine, published by Illustrated Press, which was published quarterly for several years and then ended with issue No. 84 in 2023. It published articles on a variety of illustration artists who did advertising art, book and magazine covers, and interior artwork.
The late Sam Gafford (1962-2019) was a scholar on the work of William Hope Hodgson (1877-1918). Hodgson wrote essays, short fiction, novels, and poetry, most in the genres of horror, fantastic, and science fiction.
Last year, I did a three-part series on Steve Hockensmith’s terrific Holmes on the Range series. This essay, a comprehensive chronology, and a Q&A which Steve kindly did with me, represents the deepest dive anyone has written on these fun books.
In celebration of the recent streaming series, Alien: Earth (whether you enjoyed it or not), I have created a new list of films that most certainly exist in the Weyland-Yutani universe, and if not certainly, then enjoy an unbelievably tenuous link to it.
This is a strange (in a good way) hybrid of alternate history (a 2023 Sidewise Award winner, in fact), syncretism, crime noir, and Christological sacrifice. Oh, and it has a little something to do with jazz, specifically that of the 1920s hot jazz era played in bars and brothels.
I have posted on Harry Dickson, the American Sherlock Holmes, a popular character and series in Europe. As I noted, he started as a German pastiche series, with Holmes now helped by Harry Taxson, later renamed Tom Wills in the Dutch version.
Originally published in December 1990, Tor Double #28 contains the fourth story (but third headlining story) by Kim Stanley Robinson, who first appeared in Tor Double #1, and the second, and final story by Jack Vance.
Kolchak the Night Stalker: Double Feature by Richard Matheson and Chuck Miller (Moonstone, November 2017). Cover art by Mark Maddox I’ve been asked over the years about the process I used to adapt the late Richard Matheson’s unproduced script for “The Night Killers” into a novella.
