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sSensor Sweep: Forest Oracle, Things Better Left Alone, Indiana Jones 5
Monday , 26, June 2023 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentPulp (Pulp Flakes): There’s visible improvement in the January 1942 issue of Black Mask. More pages, for a start. 128 pages excluding the covers, and a readable font. There are nineteen pages of ads, so actual fiction is around 112 pages. One more story than the Ellsworth era issue we saw recently. The price is the same, fifteen […]
Peter Tsouras’ Disaster at D-Day is a recent library sale pick up for me. I looked at his Rising Sun Victorious here at the Castalia House blog. This book is sub-titled “The Germans Defeat the Allies, June 1944.” Tsouras has written or edited anthologies on alternate histories including Stalingrad, Napoleon, WW1, the Cold War, Third […]
Science Fiction and Fantasy New Releases: 24 June 2023
Saturday , 24, June 2023 Uncategorized Leave a commentEvery week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy. Dawn of the Black Sun (The Silver Empire #1) – Timo Burnham A fisherman’s son who has lost everything. A wandering master haunted by regret. An exile wielding a sword that speaks. […]
Sensor Sweep: Bioshock, Black Infinity, Pulp Adventures, Black Mask
Monday , 19, June 2023 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentPulp (Pulp Flakes): Last week we saw how the competition was hurting Black Mask during Fanny Ellsworth’s editorial reign. And hinted that it might need a bigger backer. That backer was Popular Publications, a phenomenon created by Harry Steeger and Harold Goldsmith, who had started with four titles and a combined print run of 400,000 copies. Authors (Sprague de Camp Fan): […]
One of my pulp magazine guilty pleasures are the back stories in issues of Jungle Stories. Jungle Stories was a hero pulp featuring Ki-Gor from 1938 to 1954. It was a quarterly magazine from Fiction House with a lead novella featuring Ki-Gor as written by “John Peter Drummond.” Some of those are well worth reading […]
In the final volume of Will Wight’s Cradle series, Waybound, Lindon and his friends prepare themselves for the daunting challenge of killing not just the three remaining kaiju Dreadgods rampaging across the world of Cradle, but the Monarchs that keep the kaiju in check. It’s a race against time, as each death empowers the monsters […]
Science Fiction and Fantasy New Releases: 17 June 2023
Saturday , 17, June 2023 Uncategorized Leave a commentEvery week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy. Birth of an Empire (The Frontiers Saga: Fringe Worlds #7) – Ryk Brown Getting to know old friends again… Getting their hands on improved tech… Unchaining the limits of their ability to […]
Sensor Sweep: Spider Man, Punisher, Gardner F. Fox, Lin Carter
Monday , 12, June 2023 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentFiction (Goodman Games): Linwood Vrooman Carter was born on June 9th, 1930 in St. Petersburg, Florida. In the august company of his fellow Appendix N authors, Lin Carter is a figure both of high esteem and some controversy. As an editor and critic, he is indispensable, most notably for his role in editing the landmark Ballantine […]
Donald Wandrei (1908-1987) is one of my favorite pulp magazine writers of fiction. He was a member of the Lovecraft Circle, wrote for Weird Tales and Astounding Stories, and co-founded the publisher Arkham House with August Derleth. He had started out writing weird poetry and had moved into writing prose. His weird and science fiction […]
Science Fiction and Fantasy New Releases: 10 June 2023
Saturday , 10, June 2023 Uncategorized Leave a commentEvery week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy. Monster Farmer – D. B. King Some farmers grow corn. Some grow grain. He grows monsters. Erron plans to retire from adventuring to a little farm and live out his days raising […]
Sensor Sweep: RPG Con, Most Dangerous Game, Palladium
Monday , 5, June 2023 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentConventions (Ken Lizzi): I have just returned from a long weekend spent in a hotel near the Dallas/Fort Worth airport where I joined 500 or so like-minded individuals playing games. The North Texas RPG Con was my first gaming convention. I’m minded to return next year. I had fun. I ran into some old friends […]
I wrote an entry “Whither Weird Tales?” back in November 2015. At the time it had been a year and a half since the last issue of the magazine had appeared. The magazine was reanimated in 2019 with Jonathan Maberry as editor. Five issues of Weird Tales have been published since then. Issue #366 came […]