Blog Archives
sAn Overlooked Gem: “The Green Odyssey” by PJ Farmer
Saturday , 1, July 2017 Before the Big Three, Book Review 3 CommentsLate one night last year, I was looking for a new book to read and discovered that there was another work by PJ Farmer added to Project Gutenberg, The Green Odyssey. A few hours later, I had finished a swashbuckling classic, a full-blooded adventure to rank with the best of Howard, Stevenson, or Sabatini. And […]
Leaning into Leigh Brackett
Saturday , 24, June 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Before the Big Three, Pulp Revolution, Short Fiction 20 CommentsLeigh Brackett is something of a staple here at Castalia House and for the Pulp Revolution crowd at large, but I must admit it’s taken me quite a while to get to her stuff. I’ve seen Alex’s reviews, of course, and I’ve noted her constant exclusion by the “women have historically been excluded from SFF!!1” […]
E.E. Smith: The Doc Is In
Saturday , 27, May 2017 Before the Big Three, Book Review, Fiction 17 CommentsLast week was #SpaceOperaWeek, so I’m a bit late to the party. Still, any time is a good time for space opera! Being a relative newcomer to both Appendix N and the pulps is a mixed bag. On the one hand, oh man – what an embarrassment of riches! Of what I’ve been able to […]
The Truth About Women and Science Fiction
Tuesday , 16, May 2017 Appendix N, Before the Big Three 17 CommentsOver at Tor.com, Judith Tarr weighs in on a well trod discussion point: Every year or two, someone writes another article about a genre that women have just now entered, which used to be the province of male writers. Usually it’s some form of science fiction. Lately it’s been fantasy, especially epic fantasy (which strikes […]
The Double-Edged Sword of Dogmatism
Saturday , 13, May 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Before the Big Three, Fiction, Uncategorized 12 CommentsLast week, I wrote an observation about Lovecraft’s works. In the comments, several readers mentioned The Shadow over Innsmouth, a tale I had embarrassingly not read at the time. I rectified this error soon after. And wow, what an amazing story! An imaginative gem from beginning to end, with steadily mounting tension, an inspired explanation to the […]
How Not To Write Pulp: Brood of the Witch Queen
Monday , 24, April 2017 Before the Big Three, Book Review, Fiction 5 CommentsAs noted in a recent article, Sax Rohmer managed to write one of the greatest pulp novels ever, The Insidious Dr.Fu-Manchu, as well as one of its worst, Brood of the Witch-Queen. While I examined the former in-depth, I didn’t do so for the latter. Well, I believe any negative opinion of a book deserves a full […]
The Pulp One-Hit Wonder: Sax Rohmer
Saturday , 22, April 2017 Authors, Before the Big Three, Book Review, Fiction 14 CommentsAt first glance, it seems strange that Arthur Henry Ward, writing under the pseudonym Sax Rohmer, doesn’t garner more attention on this blog. After all, he wrote the enormously entertaining, successful, and influential The Insidious Dr.Fu-Manchu. But upon further reflection, it makes sense. The book in question is not fantasy or science fiction. And as we […]
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 […]
Fairy Stories and Beyond Baum’s Wizard of Oz
Saturday , 1, April 2017 Authors, Before the Big Three, Fiction 21 Comments“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” – C.S. […]
Conan meets Cthulhu
Saturday , 18, March 2017 Appendix N, Authors, Before the Big Three, Short Fiction 23 CommentsIn Jeffro’s last Sensor Sweep he made note of the Alexandru Costantin’s recent blog post, which puts forth a rather bold claim – that Robert E. Howard did Lovecraftian horror better than H.P. himself. For those who may be unaware, Howard was one of the major contributors to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. In other words, he wrote stories […]
The pulps are supposed to be racist. I mean, if you hear anything about the pulps it generally about how racist they are. Somehow the legions of people that are literally shaking after reading “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” never talk about how the pulpiest of pulp science fiction romances was between an ex-Confederate and a Red […]