Katabasis by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager, August 26, 2025) and We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad (S&S/Marysue Rucci Books, September 23, 2025). Covers: Patrick Arrasmith, uncredited The New York Times traces the inception of the “dark academia” genre to Donna Tart’s The Secret History, a Gothic murder mystery involving Classics students at a liberal arts college.

George Allan England was born in Fort McPherson, Nebraska on February 9, 1877. He attended Harvard University, where he earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. In 1903, he published Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses.

Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers (Avon Books, 1948) Mysteries aren’t my first choice in genre fiction; science fiction and fantasy appeal to me more consistently. Even so, I’ve read a fair number of mysteries, by authors from Dashiell Hammett to P.D.

Jeffrey Lord was a house name used for a series of 37 fantasy/SF novels published between 1969 and 1984. They were billed as an “adult” fantasy series, meaning that they had sex in them. However the sex was pretty mild by today’s standards.

Back in September, we got a new Lazarus Gray book: The Adventures of Lazarus Gray, Vol. 16, from Barry Reese. This one has a novel, Shadows Over Yalta. As with other recent Reese works, this is from his own imprint, Reese Unlimited.

Good afterevenmorn, Readers! How was your winter holidays? I hope you found it gentle and restful and full of the things that make you happy. I spent some time with family, which is always lovely, and more time by myself recovering (the joys of being a massive introvert).

Over the past couple of years, S.T. Joshi’s Sarnath Press has been putting out weird-fiction collections from several lesser-known authors published in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. At present, there are almost a dozen volumes, with more in the works.

Happy 2026! Let’s kick butt for another year. Or at least, limp to the finish in 52 weeks. I really enjoy ‘meeting’ with my friends – and some strangers – here at Black Gate every Monday morning. Keep checking in, and let’s keep the discourse going on things we love.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their  rhyme of things not found within  recorded  time. from ‘Mythopoeia‘ (1931) by JRR Tolkien The impetus to write my Tolkien series came from rewatching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and realizing just how much I dislike them.

Here’s a New Year’s treat* to distract you from the fact that I haven’t completed a new themed watch-a-thon (it’s coming, eventually). I’ve had a little think about my favorite films, and what makes them my favorites.

Now that I’ve looked at all of the official Tor Doubles, plus the proto-version and the unpublished version, where to next if you like the double format. Obviously, there are the Ace Doubles, which ran from 1952 until 1978.  That series provides the reader with at least 261 additional volumes of science fiction, plus a similar number of westerns and numerous mystery novels.

Happy New year! This emerging blog salutes Sue Granquist, who contributed every other Thursday championing Goth Chick News in this very time slot. Sue Granquist contributed 741 articles over 16 years here on Black Gate with a special focus on horror movies and conventions (the longest-running column in Black Gate history).

Star Barbarian (Lancer Books, 1969). Cover by Jeff Jones I picked up a couple of books by Dave Van Arnam called Star Barbarian and Lord of Blood that have connections to the Sword & Planet genre. They’re set in a future time after Earth has colonized many planets.

Code Name: Intrepid is an interesting series from Robert J. Mendenhall, available through his own imprint Blue Planet Press. CNI is a special team of military and civilian experts who handle cases that are extraordinary or of an unusual order in the 1930s.

Column: Reflections, Autographs, by Robert Silverberg Silverberg spent the summer of ’99 signing copies of Dying Inside. 7,000 autographs — a novella in and of itself. He muses on autographs and people who collect them.

At PulpFest 2025, we got the third volume of Donald Keyhoe’s Devildog Squadron series, The Mystery Meteor, from Age of Aces Books, after skipping a year. This was his second series, started in 1931, the same month as Philip Strange.

Throughout 2025, I shared with you what I was Reading, Watching, and Listening To (audiobook-wise), I also covered a little bit of videogaming in a couple columns. But I figured I’d talk about some of the games I played this year, in one post.