Blog Archives
sThis is an awesome, awesome show loaded with commentary, discussion, analysis, and speculation. We mention a great many blog posts as we cruise through this, so to help you keep up, here’s a roundup: Jon Mollison’s comment on Pulp Nova from over on Google+ John C. Wright’s Ugly and the Beast My post on The Pulps […]
I recently mused on Twitter that Jack Vance may be my favorite Appendix N author, despite the fact that none of his books that I’ve read so far would likely top my favorites list. I’ve explored this ambivalence in the past, in other dimensions, and for the most part it still holds. Still, I’m finding that […]
Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition Keeper Rulebook Chapter 2: H. P. Lovecraft
Friday , 28, April 2017 Appendix N 10 CommentsThis chapter contains an absolutely first rate retrospective on Lovecraft’s works. And when the authors write that “Lovecraft is recognized as being one of the foremost horror writers of the twentieth century,” there are no ifs, buts, caveats, or footnotes. It is absolutely refreshing to have this stated so plainly. And I have not seen a […]
THROWBACK SF THURSDAY: The Narrow Land by Jack Vance
Thursday , 27, April 2017 Appendix N 7 CommentsI wrote a response to PC Bushi’s review of At the Earth’s Core over at Every Day Should Be Tuesday. The Narrow Land is a collection of six short stories and one novella by Jack Vance. This was my first exposure to Vance after The Dying Earth. What it doesn’t have is the magic […]
Black Gate has a great post up about Famous Fantastic Mysteries, an anthology drawn from the magazine that kept the classics of the early days of fantasy and science fiction in print with top flight covers that could rival the likes of Margaret Brundage and Frank Frazetta. Put together in 1991, it represents an extremely good […]
The RPG Tequendria by Scott Malthouse and published through The Trollish Delver Games was released recently on DriveThruRPG as a pay-what-you-want pdf and let me tell you, I immediately wanted to snap it up. Why? Well, the price was right but, that’s not the main reason. The main reason is that it is the only […]
It does bother me. Going back and reading the old books, getting excited about them, wanting to explain what it is I’m seeing, I’ll necessarily come back with an imperfect abstraction. One brief enough that people will actually read what I have to say. And so many people have never even heard of these books […]
John Carter of Pellucidar
Saturday , 15, April 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Book Review, Fiction 18 CommentsNot too long ago, HP of Throwback Thursday fame and I decided to both read the same book and write up our reactions. This wouldn’t be the first time for us, though this time we agreed on a book mutually and well ahead of time. Because he is a gentleman, he also offered to let […]
There Are No Good Masculine Female Characters
Saturday , 15, April 2017 Appendix N, Before the Big Three 36 CommentsOver at SuperversiveSF, Declan Finn wades into the strong female characters debate with a roundup of good and bad examples from film and television. The resulting discussion is both brisk and entertaining: Jeffro: Strong Female Characters…? Eh, no thanks. Let’s see some Feminine Female Characters. That’d really be something new! Declan Finn: [Arched Brow] You don’t […]
THROWBACK SF THURSDAY: Who Fears the Devil? By Manly Wade Wellman
Thursday , 13, April 2017 Appendix N 26 CommentsI went to a panel at the WorldCon in San Antonio a few years back on Texas Pulp SF. Apart from the 800-lb. 1800-lb. gorilla in the room, Texans were grossly underrepresented in the pulps. The consensus was that they were writing speculative fiction, and good speculative fiction, but that it was getting published as […]
GUEST POST: Rick Stump on the Dawn of Sword & Sorcery
Tuesday , 11, April 2017 Appendix N, Short Fiction 12 CommentsMy take on Conan is just a little different than that of some others, as can be seen here. But I want to look a bit more closely at the actual stories of Conan to see why they are some of the most influential and popular works of the last 80+ years. As I have […]
I think a fair case could be made that the most significant thing about the advent of the internet is that it has greatly facilitated the discussion and development surrounding independent and amateur role-playing games. It’s a nonstop party out here… and if there was a time when I was sad that there just wasn’t […]