Black Gate #13

It’s always a good day when the latest Black Gate shows up in the mailbox — 200 plus pages of the best fantasy short fiction focusing on the woefully-underrepresented genre of secondary world fantasy. Underrepresented, that is, in short fiction magazines, not on store shelves, where novel length treatments of the same are some of the biggest blockbusters of our time. Black Gate is one of the few magazines that understands that but, with the birth of some newer markets recently, Black Gate no longer stands alone — rather it is at the forefront of the movement to return adventure fantasy to the magazine format.

One look at Black Gate and you understand what makes it the leader in this field. Gorgeous cover and interior art, a huge amount of content including short stories and novellas, non-fiction, and an extensive reviews section that takes on both gaming and current fiction offerings, makes Black Gate a magazine that delivers on all cylinders.

But how about the fiction? It isn’t my intention to write a full-scale review of BG 13, since I didn’t take notes and I still haven’t read it all (I like to make it last a bit), but a quick run down of some of the highlights is in order. Fans of John C. Hocking’s story in Lords of the Swords, ‘Vali’s Wound,’ will be excited to see the precursor story to that tale of vikings, ‘The Face in the Sea.’ Peadar Ó Guilín returns to Black Gate with another weird tale, ‘The Evil Eater,’ a contemporary fantasy in which a forbidden food leads to an underworld of horror. And John R. Fultz offers another strong fantasy, one of the best in the issue, with a tale of wizards and rebels in a most compellingly drawn setting in ‘Return of the Quill.’

That’s just the tip of the iceberg, for we have Jonathan L. Howard’s ‘The Beautiful Corridor,’ a story of a thief infiltrating a dangerous tomb, ‘The Good Sheriff’ by David Wesley Hill, in which an Old West gunslinger must find a way to escape a strange world of gods and demons, the excellently strange ‘The Merhcant of Loss’ by Justin Stanchfield and Mikal Trimm, a story of a bargain between a merchant and a mysterious woman, in which value is found in the most esoteric of things. There’s more, much more, a fantastic little tale by L. Blunt Jackson ‘Spider Friend,’ Amy Tibbetts’ moving ‘Bones in the Desert, Stones in the Sea,’ and Matthew Beys’ deliciously oddball ‘The Murder at Doty Station,’ are just a few more of the other standouts in a fiction-packed and well-rounded issue.

And there is some great non-fiction as well, especially L. E. Modesitt’s ‘Behind the Magic of Recluse,’ which looks at the development of the magic system and background of the world of his Recluse series. I’ve never read it — never even heard of it — but this article was a fascinating read that will be of interest to anyone that writes or reads secondary world fantasy, and it certainly served to pique my interest in his work. Finally, Black Gate is still chock full of reviews of the latest in gaming and reading, and I’m proud to say — and never too modest to mention — that six of my own reviews can be found in the review section, including the latest from Steven Brust, the follow-up sequel to Robert Low’s ‘The Whale Road,’ a few Warhammer novels, and a page-turner horror-alt history, ‘Pax Dakota,’ from the sadly recently deceased Ken Rand.

But hey — you don’t have to take my word for it, as over on the BG site you can read exerpts of all the fiction I’ve just mentioned: Click here for a sample of Black Gate # 13