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sThis book is the talk of the town right now, but before we get into it I’d like to clear one thing up. The narrative that’s emerged this past week is of a plucky writer running afoul of an editor just because of a blatantly pro-life message in the opening chapter. Now, a lot of people commenting on this […]
Robert E. Howard and H. P. Lovecraft on Immigration
Sunday , 14, February 2016 Uncategorized 3 Comments“You are right in your denunciations of unrestricted immigration. You are fortunate in having lived in a district apart from the mongrel swarms.” Robert E. Howard to H. P. Lovecraft Robert E. Howard’s correspondence with H. P. Lovecraft covered weird fiction, history, and current events. One item that came up was immigration. By the time […]
A Beautiful Friendship: Lovecraft’s Induction into the WEIRD TALES Roster
Friday , 12, February 2016 Appendix N 2 CommentsThanks to the tireless efforts of SFFAudio, a smorgasbord of hard to find information about the early days of the weird fiction scene is freely available for anyone that wants to dig through it. Among the many treasures hidden in the scans from Weird Tales magazine are H. P. Lovecraft’s first several letters to that iconic […]
Short Reviews will return next week with more Planet Stories! Science fiction fans are a cantankerous lot, and it seems perhaps they always have been. Or maybe Peacock & Payne simply enjoyed publishing some of the grousier letters they received. But one thing is certain: even the perplexed and frustrated who’d write in to complain […]
RETROSPECTIVE: Behind the Curtain by Francis Stevens
Thursday , 11, February 2016 Before the Big Three 4 CommentsThis story had the potential to be a masterpiece. The pacing, the cascade of hints that gradually snap into focus, and most of all, a character that really does come across as the “very apotheosis of hatred”– wow! As I was reading it I wanted to compare it to Edgar Allan Poe, even. Then I got […]
SPACE ODDITY: An SF Musical Storytelling Guessing Game, Clue 1
Thursday , 11, February 2016 Fiction 12 CommentsGood songs often tell a story. Sometimes, that story is as mysterious as Robinette Broadhead’s backstory in Gateway. Sometimes it is simply confusing. There are songs that have long haunted me, not because of their message or music, but because I can’t make heads nor tails of what the lyrics mean. So I’d like to play […]
Welcome to another edition of Wargame Wednesday! If you missed Warren Abox’s guest post yesterday, go check it out here. You know… I’ve seen Osprey Publishing’s books for years and had no idea that they did any sort of games, much less miniatures rules. A word of warning, though: the “En Garde!” covered is not […]
It turns out I had been losing in Malta much worse than I thought. My dad suggested I count my dead pile before going forward, and I found that I had already suffered enough airborn losses to prevent an Axis victory. Rather than replay Malta until one of us could figure out a winning strategy […]
Guest Post by Warren Abox: Osprey Publishing’s “En Garde!”
Tuesday , 9, February 2016 Wargames 8 CommentsThe Wargame Wednesday crew traditionally focuses on traditional hex-and-counter wargames, but this week the editors have been kind enough to allow a miniature war gamer some time in the fun-house with a review of the latest war game offering from Osprey Publishing. En Garde!, is a short set of rules designed to recreate the flashing […]
Hello again, and Happy Superversive Tuesday! To continue my theme from last post, I’m going to talk about something completely different. Something personal. Namely… J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore site has sorted me into Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff is noteworthy in the Harry Potter series for being supremely un-noteworthy (“A Very Potter Musical” famously lampshades this after the end […]
I haven’t done any role-playing games with my son since… well, since that day he asked to play Gamma World first edition several months back. He loved the ACKS Player Companion when he saw it and rolled up a Gnomish Trickster, a Thrassian Gladiator, and a Priestess one time… but I never seemed to find the […]
RETROSPECTIVE: Part Two of “The Citadel of Fear” by Francis Stevens
Monday , 8, February 2016 Before the Big Three 2 CommentsFor all the flack H. P. Lovecraft gets for being a terrible wordsmith, the guy was not dumb. He knew exactly what makes for a good story. He not explained how to do it in a 1920 article for the United Amateur Press Association, but he also put his ideas into practice so well, he […]