"The Loiterer in the Lobby" by Michael Kaufmann and Mark McLaughlin
"Stranger Ev'rywhere" by Tina L. Jens
"Night of Two Moons" by David B. Coe
"Beat Me Daddy (Eight to the Bar)" by Cory Doctorow
"Far from Laredo" by David W. Hill
"A Prayer for Captain La Hire" by Patrice E. Sarath
"Mama Told Me Not to Come" by Bill Johnson

Classic Reprint:
"Scatheling" by Nancy Varian Berberick

There's a wide range of fiction offered in this fourth issue of Black Gate, not all of which falls neatly under the rubric suggested by the magazine's subtitle of "Adventures in Fantasy Literature." There are several stories that are clearly fantasy or supernatural horror, but there is also a straightforward science fiction story, a historical story with only a suggestion of the fantastic, and an sf story cleverly disguised as a sword-'n'-sorcery story. There is also a classic reprint by Nancy Varian Berberick, "Scatheling," which I will not review per Tangent policy. It's set in the same Norse-influenced world as her novels Shadow of the Seventh Moon and The Panther's Hoard, featuring the Dwarf skald Garroc and his foster-son Hinthan, who here encounter the Seer Scatheling.

H.P. Lovecraft has always been an object of both veneration and parody, often at the same time, as evidenced in Michael Kaufmann and Mark McLaughlin's "The Loiterer in the Lobby." Its intentions announced by the title, the story wastes no time setting off on a tale of eldritch horror, nameless dread, and skin cream. Worshipers of C'zog-Kamog, ancient god of the lost K'tunga people, are trying to revive their dread deity through a terrible plot involving cosmetic products, nuclear power, and multinational corporations, and only our not-so-bold narrator, with the aid of the mysterious and titular Loiterer, can hope to stop them. And so on and so forth. It's enjoyable enough, though the humor confines itself to the obvious targets, such as Lovecraft's weakness for obscure adjectives and jaw-cracking names.

Part of Tina L. Jens's "Lonesome Blues Pub" series, "Stranger Ev'rywhere" is a rambling tale of one night's events at said pub, owned by Miss Mustang, where the clientele includes both drunken college students and the ghosts of various legendary blues muscians. Harpsicrazy, a regular, is no ghost, but suffers from the results of a botched frontal lobotomy. The only thing that will settle him down is playing the blues on his harmonica. When a college student plays a cruel prank on Harpsicrazy, only the musical efforts of the pub's occult clientele can prevent Harpsicrazy from going berserk and destroying the pub. Jens's story is drenched in the lore and legends of the blues, and she effectively cuts between Miss Mustang's resigned and Harpsicrazy's surreally distorted perspectives.

"Night of Two Moons" by David B. Coe appears to be a prelude to an upcoming fantasy trilogy, according to the biographical sidebar accompanying the story. Here we are given the tale of the treachery of Carthach, a captain of the Qirsi people, who betrays his soldiers to the rival Eandi. His treason will lead to the subjugation of his people and the suppression of their magical heritage. The Weaving magic of the Qirsi is potentially interesting, though it is left undeveloped here. The setting is fairly generic High Fantasy, but the effects of Carthach's treason, on himself and on his people, are drawn with skill and care.

Not fantasy at all, but post-holocaust sf, is Cory Doctorow's "Beat Me Daddy (Eight to the Bar)", an examination of the crucial role of garage bands after the end of civilization. After a nuclear war, survivors make do by excavating piles of rubble and living off the vast supplies of canned goods buried underneath. Brad, Steve, Timson, and Hambone are four such survivors, and also the members of the Eight-Bar Band, the best (and possibly only) band in the world. When Jenna, a secretive survivor, wanders through, her attempts to push the community towards self-sufficiency lead to turmoil, violence, and an eventual escape to a new and more hopeful life. The story feels like a homage to the many classic post-nuclear-war stories of the past, a version of John Wyndham's "Re-Birth" cranked through Doctorow's bizarre imagination and up-tempo prose.

To be honest, I've never wondered exactly how a Wild West gunslinger would behave if summoned to another universe to slay demons, but now that I have read David W. Hill's "Far from Laredo," I have a better idea. Charles Duke finds himself one day rather far indeed from Laredo, inadvertently summoned to rid a village of the three demons who haunt it. With a stoic bloodthirstiness worthy of Clint Eastwood, Duke takes care of the demons and rides off with saddlebags of gold. The ending makes it clear that this will be the first in a series, and while there's little to differentiate Duke from the hordes of other stoic gunslingers that have ridden through the pages of pulp fiction since time immemorial, it's a promising beginning to a series.

Several of Joan of Arc's men must deal with the effects of her death in Patrice E. Sarath's "A Prayer for Captain La Hire," set in fifteenth-century France. Captain La Hire, along with his former comrades de Poulengy and de Metz, are summoned to aid another former comrade, Gilles de Rais. De Rais is, of course, the legendary practitioner of the black arts, and La Hire, who quickly discovers his treachery, must rescue his friends and defeat de Rais. This is incidental, however, to the main thrust of the story, which is La Hire's struggle to come to terms with Joan of Arc's defeat and death. The historical setting is impressive, and La Hire is a complex and fascinating character, wrestling with difficult issues of faith and duty.

Bill Johnson's "Mama Told Me Not to Come," though set in a land of wizards and knights and dealing with the adventures of a magic-wielding warrior, his mysterious sidekick, and an assortment of daemons, dragons, and gods, is not a fantasy story at all. Johnson has taken the original tack of using a multiplayer online role-playing game, such as EverQuest or Ultima Online, as the setting for his story, and Sir Linux, a self-aware character in the game, as the hero. Linux has stumbled across a mysterious mirror that will allow him to escape QuestWorld to a land without Players or Makers, a land where "Nipsies" (Non-Player Characters) like himself can live in peace. His quest incurs the enmity of one of QuestWorld's Makers, and ends on a cliffhanger. Johnson doesn't seem to have quite as high a profile as he deserves, though he did win a Hugo a couple years back, and this story is up to his usual high standards.