Blog Archives
sInvincible, by Kit Sun Cheah
Thursday , 19, October 2017 Book Review, Fiction, Short Fiction 2 CommentsIn an Empire beset by internal rebellion and ferocious yaomo, the elite Shenwujun stand ready to defend human civilization. Among the Shenwujun there is none finer than Ensign Zhang Tianyou, who earned the nickname Zhang the Invincible. During a mission to quash a nascent rebellion, a Shenwujun detachment discovers evidence that the Grand Union is […]
GUEST POST: Alex Stump on The Chronicles of Narnia
Thursday , 19, October 2017 Book Review 12 CommentsI never read the Chronicles of Narnia as a kid. The movies were good but I didn’t read the books until early this year. And after reading them all I wish was still a kid. Okay, a lot of people know the story so I’ll make it quick. It’s World War 2, the Nazi Germans […]
It’s hard to believe that the first book in this series came out over two years ago. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then! But let me tell you, everything is here: The election, who managed to predict it, and why The recent kerfuffle in the NFL Comics Gate and Alt*Hero […]
THROWBACK SF THURSDAY: The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, Part 2
Thursday , 12, October 2017 Book Review 15 CommentsThe mighty poets write in blood and tears And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears. They reach their mad blind hands into the night, To plumb abysses dead to human sight. Tuesday was World Mental Health Day. When Damon Knight and L. Sprague de Camp were denigrating Robert E. Howard, they were doing it used […]
In Jon Del Arroz’s novella, Gravity of the Game, Commissioner Hideki Ichiro is growing frustrated as his attempts to bring baseball to the moon are frustrated by its low gravity. About to give up, he visits a sickly child in the hospital, whose love of the game rekindle Ichiro’s drive to succeed. But as he is about […]
A Science Fiction Pulp Classic: The Lost World
Saturday , 30, September 2017 Before the Big Three, Book Review, Fiction 12 CommentsWhile far from unknown, and especially popular in the first few decades after its release, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World is rarely mentioned as a pulp adventure. And yet, released in 1912, the same year as Tarzan of the Apes and a year before The Insidious Dr.Fu-Manchu, it’s part of the same tradition. Primarily known for Sherlock […]
THROWBACK SF THURSDAY: The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, Part 1
Thursday , 28, September 2017 Book Review 16 CommentsUp, John Kane, the grey night’s falling; The sun’s sunk in blood and the fog comes crawling; From hillside to hill the grey wolves are calling; Will ye come, will ye come, John Kane? Tor’s Conan pastiches is no way to step away from Robert E. Howard. I enjoyed them—the Robert Jordan and John Maddox […]
Independent authors would do well to take a page from Darkest of Dreams, a collection of short stories written by four different authors. The prospect of writing a 100,000 word novel, which provides around 300 pages of entertainment, requires a serious time commitment. To say nothing of the costs associated with investing in editing, proofreading, and […]
THROWBACK SF THURSDAY: Leonard Carpenter’s Conan Pastiches
Thursday , 14, September 2017 Book Review 13 CommentsToday we close the books on The Summer of Conan. You can find all of my Conan posts here. Over the course of three months, I read every Conan story Robert E. Howard wrote, watched all three Conan movies, and read twelve Conan pastiches. I did not, unfortunately, get to any of the Conan comics. […]
THROWBACK SF THURSDAY: John Maddox Roberts’ Conan Pastiches
Thursday , 31, August 2017 Book Review 13 CommentsJohn Maddox Roberts wrote eight Conan books. I have three—Conan the Champion, Conan the Bold, and Conan and the Amazon. He is best known for his SPQR series, historical fiction mysteries set in Rome at the dawn of the empire. Roberts may be the best of the Tor pastiche authors. Robert Jordan may be a […]
The streets run red with blood when a man known only as The Sellsword comes to the dying mining city of Aldreth. The advanced infirmity of the plague-ridden nominal ruler, Duke Owain, has opened the door for two rival wizards to vie for control of the city. The sorcerer Varlak has run things on the […]