From richard.horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:40:39 2004
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 22:36:23 -0600
From: Rich Horton <richard.horton@sff.net>
Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton
Subject: Summary: Black Gate, 2003

Summary, Black Gate, 2003

Black Gate now completes its third year of publication (going by cover
date). It remains one of the best looking magazines in the field, and
one of the thickest (perhaps actually the thickest!). The original
goal, and perhaps still the goal, was to publish quarterly, but so far
there have been two issues each year. (But two pretty big issues!) By
my count, they published about 175,000 words of fiction in 2003. There
were a total of 17 stories. Three of the stories were reprints (two
long novellas by Charles R. Tanner about his character Tumithak, and a
novelette by Don Bassingthwaite that only appeared in a convention
booklet, as I recall -- at any rate, somewhere obscure). Of the 14
original stories, 2 are novellas, 2 are novelettes, and the other 10
of course short stories (one a 100 word or so short short). The
original fiction totaled about 110,000 words.

Ob-disclosure -- I have had reviews and an essay in Black Gate in past
issues, and with the next issue I will be starting a column about,
basically, old SF and fantasy. (The first column will concentrate on
the wonderful old pulp Planet Stories.)

I thought the best new story in each issue of Black Gate was the
novella. For Spring this was Todd McAulty's "There's a Hole in
October", a suspenseful story about a drug courier who picks up some
children on the run from a very scary character. For Fall this was
Mark W. Tiedemann's "Miller's Wife", which besides getting extra
credit for being set in Missouri (after all Mark lives here too), is a
strong story of a city man coming to an Ozark town and getting
involved against his better judgment with a seductive local woman.

The best novelette was probably Bassingthwaite's reprint, "Barbarian
Instinct" (Spring), which may become a series. Of the short stories,
Iain Rowan's "Looking for Goats, Finding Monkeys" (Fall), about a
Chinese man who makes his living pretending to exorcise dwellings of
demons, and his reaction when he encounters a real demon, was my
favorite. From Spring I liked Brian Hopkins's "North" and Jennifer
Busick's "La Desterrada".

Black Gate continues to do a fine job pursuing its mission -- to
provide entertaining "adventure fantasy".