Blog Archives
sHighNoon on Proxima B is a brand new anthology from Baen Books. It is the companion volume to Gunfight on Europa Station. David Boop is the editor, 241 pages, trade paperback format, $18.00. Cover by Dominic Harman. Contents: Foreword (High Noon on Proxima B) • essay by David Boop Justice and Prosperity • novelette by Milton J. Davis Five […]
Chuck Dixon’s Siege of the Black Citadel is a brand new novel from Castalia House. Dixon started writing King Kull stories for the comic Savage Sword of Conan in 1985. If I am correct his first Conan story was “Winter of the Wolf” in The Savage Sword of Conan #133 (February 1987). If my spread […]
I have a near love-hate relationship with Louis L’Amour. I took a sledge hammer to his historical novel The Walking Drum a few years back after a re-read. On the other hand, I like his pulp adventures featuring Turk Madden and Ponga Jim Mayo. I find L’Amour works better in slender paperbacks from the 1960s- […]
Black Mask magazine is considered to be one of the most influential of pulp magazine along with Weird Tales, Astounding Stories/Science Fiction, and Argosy. All had a profound impact on popular fiction and culture. Black Mask was the magazine that changed crime-mystery-detective fiction from the locked room to the mean streets. Dashiell Hammett and Carroll […]
Michael Z. Williamson’s That Was Now, This Was Then is just out in mass market paperback. It is the sequel to A Long Time Until Now (2015). A short description: SOLDIERS OUT OF TIME Then: First Lieutenant Sean Elliott and nine other mixed-service U.S. soldiers on a convoy in Afghanistan suddenly found themselves and their […]
I wrote that William R. Forstchen’s One Second After was the scariest book I ever read. The Final Day is the third book in the series. This picks up six months after the events in One Year After end. John Matherson is delivered a message from the neighboring community from an army officer who claims […]
Baen Books has been producing a series of themed science fiction anthologies featuring new writers. Gunfight on Europa Station was released as a hardback last year and as a paperback last month. The back of Galaxy magazine in 1950 had this: “Jets blasting, Bat Durston came screeching down through the atmosphere of Bbllzznaj, a tiny […]
I have read another seven stories in the Dark Forces anthology. By coincidence, two are Christmas stories. Joyce Carol Oates, “The Bingo Master,: A 39 year old spinster decides she is going to lose her virginity. She struck out at some downtown bars. She ends up at a bingo hall and decides to go slumming […]
Dark Forces (Viking Press, 1980) is viewed as one of the greatest horror short fiction anthologies. Editor Kirby McCauley was able to bring together new and some of the still living Weird Tales writers for a very large book. I have read a few stories reprinted elsewhere back in the 1980s. I can remember seeing […]
Last week, I looked at the The Manhunt Companion which I had picked up last year at Pulpfest. I picked up The Best of Manhunt at Mike Chomko’s table at Pulpfest this year the first day. The Best of Manhunt (Stark House, 2019) is in trade paperback format, 384 pages, edited by Jeff Vorzimmer. Introduction […]
One of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone T.V. Show is “The Howling Man.” It is episode number 5 from season 2 (1960). It is based on a story by Charles Beaumont. The story originally appeared in the magazine, Rogue, November 1959 issue. Rogue was one of William Hamling’s magazines published from the mid-1950s […]
Tales From the Magician’s Skull #6 is from 2021. A total of 80 pages, cover by Doug Kovacs featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Six stories, editor introduction, and three articles present. John C. Hocking has been present in most of the issues with Benhus, the King’s Blade. Benhus has some magic wands inherited from […]