Books, Writing, Life

Well, I’ve decided to give Black Gate a try, and so I ordered Issue 13.

It’s not often that I desire to read short fiction, and when I do, I’m not one to be very adventurous with my reading. That is to say, I tend to grab an anthology by an author I know I’ll like — an author who writes the kind of short fiction I enjoy.

Practically, this means subscribing to short fiction magazines is a huge waste of money, for I’ve found that short story magazines do not generally publish my kind of short fiction. (What exactly is “my kind” of short fiction, I can’t really say.)

I might try a few stories from the first issue, but I always end up putting the magazine — and all its subsequent issues — aside until the subscription runs out; then I get rid of the whole lot. If I added up the subscription cost to magazines I’d never read, I could easily buy all the Wheel of Time novels in hardback — and probably have enough change left over for a cup of coffee and a muffin to enjoy while reading one of Jordan’s amazing prologues.

Asimov’s. Analog. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Weird Tales. Cemetery Dance. Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. They’ve all been delivered to my house; most were thrown out, unread.

Why do I do this? I can’t tell you … other than say that when I sit down to read I generally reach for a novel.

So the question is, “Will Black Gate be any different?”

I hope so, and I think it will. For one reason, I’ve read a few long novels in a row and I’m itching for a break from the long form.

For another reason, I love traditional epic, sword-and-sorcery, medieval, and D&D-style fantasy. I love it more than I love horror fiction, science fiction, or contemporary fantasy. And Black Gate is a magazine dedicated to this traditional kind of fantasy that I love.

Finally, I’ve had an epiphany of sorts about short fiction: namely, that you can’t go into it expecting the same kind of emotional experience you do in a novel. It took me a while to realize this because growing up I read a lot of horror fiction in the short form, and unlike other kinds of fiction, the horror short story is generally scarier than the horror novel. But that’s not true of other genres: the sense of wonder will always be greater in a science fiction novel, in which the author has the room to develop his themes and ideas in great detail, than it will be in a science fiction short story. The same is true of traditional fantasy fiction — especially of traditional fantasy fiction — and almost all other kinds of fiction as well.

I’m really hoping to fall in love with Black Gate. I’m really, really hoping….