Fiction (Marzaat): Below is a list of some fantastic fiction related to World War One. Linked stories are discussed on the Home Page, and each story there classified by four characteristics and tagged accordingly:

Writing (With Both Hands): Nick Cole’s Strange Company 3 is coming out April, so I started reading the first Strange Company again this week. And that got me to thinking about the use of convention in telling stories. We cannot truly understand literary genres without understanding the conventions that comprise them.

Comic Books (Kaboooom): In another time, Solomon Kane would have been a Knight Errant. As it stands, he is a self-appointed champion of justice. A Puritan by birth and inclination, he has traveled around the world and faced many evils in the name of good. But for all that he is concerned with the next world, he is an Englishman, and so answers the call to war when Queen and Country demand his sword.

Art (Documentary Central): Go beyond the paintings of legendary fantasy artist Frank Frazetta as we delve into his life story. This acclaimed documentary unveils the man behind the masterpieces, showcasing his resilience and enduring legacy. Having single-handedly sparked an entire generation of artists, Frank Frazetta is not just a pop phenomenon, but a creative artist destined for a serious place in art history.

James Bond (The Book Bond): Some exciting news from IFP today. Raymond Benson is BACK with a new an original novel featuring James Bond’s best friend and alley Felix Leiter. Below is the press release.

Tolkien (Realms Unravelled): In the midst of the War of the Ring, a clandestine conflict brewed between the two Dark Towers. These two towering fortresses, one wreathed in the ashen smoke of Mount Doom, the other ensconced amidst the jagged rocks of Nan Curunír, may have appeared to be working together, their dark banners of war fluttering in unison.

History (Frontier Partisans): Sometimes you can hear the echoes of Continuity & Persistence like the ringing of a gong smacked with a .44 caliber slug. I am presently engaged in a deep plunge into Irregular Warfare in the American Civil War — an integral part of the revised version of The Ranger Project.

Art (DMR Books): The three books which make up that ‘Book’ are The Ginger Star, The Hounds of Skaith and Reavers of Skaith. Jim Steranko was instrumental in illustrating that trilogy.

Science Fiction (Black Gate): In October of 1988, Tor Books released the first Tor Double, a volume that reprinted Arthur C. Clarke’s 1971 novella Meeting with Medusa with Kim Stanley Robinson’s novella Green Mars. Over the next thirty-five months, they would publish a total of thirty-six books in the series.

Pulp (SFF Remembrance): First published in the Summer 1946 issue of Planet Stories, which is on the Archive. It’s been reprinted a fair number of times, including in Three Times Infinity (ed. Leo Margulies), The Best of Planet Stories #1 (ed. Leigh Brackett), The Great SF Stories Volume 8 (ed. Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg), Echoes of Valor II (ed. Karl Edward Wagner), and the Brackett collection Lorelei of the Red Mist: Planetary Romances.

Fantasy (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Cele Goldmsith (later Lalli) (1933-2002) is such an editor. Like Mary Gnaedinger (1897-1976) at Famous Fantastic Mysteries and Dorothy McIlwraith (1891-1976) at Weird Tales, Goldsmith was a woman who did as much as any of these men. Where Gnadinger reprinted old Fantasy stories from days gone by, and McIlwraith sat at WT in an era that no longer wanted Sword & Sorcery.

Mythology (Balladeer’s Blog):  I.WHAT’S UP WITH YI?  – Yi the Divine Archer from Chinese mythology deserves to be remembered in one breath with some of the other great heroes and monster slayers from belief systems around the world.

Anthologies (Por Por Books): ‘Nameless Places’ (280 pp.) was published in hardback by Arkham House in 1975. Copies of these Arkham House books are rare and costly items nowadays, but I was able to procure this one for about $20. Gerald W. Page was active in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s as an author and editor. In the mid-70s he edited four volumes of DAW’s ‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories,’ and unsurprisingly, some of the entries in ‘Nameless Places’ were featured in both DAW horror and fantasy anthologies of that decade. 

History (Aexlies): In this episode, Alex Iles explores the tumultuous lives of the Border Reivers—lawless clans who thrived in the violent no-man’s land between England and Scotland during the medieval period.

Fiction (Dark Worlds Quarterly): It was Robert E. Howard’s machine in “Almuric” that got me going down this road. That technological device always struck me as odd in a tale of Burroughsian Sword & Sorcery. When I came upon another scientist at the beginning of Witch World by Andre Norton, I started wondering: how many of these machine portals are there?

Louis L’Amour (Jon Del Arroz): Louis L’amour was America’s favorite storyteller and he understood what men wanted out of fiction from westerns, sci-fi, and fantasy. His son laments the current state of the feminist modern publishing industry.

Star Trek (Red Shirts Always Die): Star Trek had a score of great episodes, but there’s an interesting reason why one in particular is William Shatner’s favorite!

Westerns (History Debunked): As the most prolific author of Westerns in Britain, I have always been intrigued by the many errors which crop up when weapons are shown in films or mentioned in books.

D&D (Dungeons & Dragons Fan): The latest iteration is WizKids’ D&D Classic Collection: Monsters S-T, which offers up seven new minis pulled from the pages of the old school RPG lore. You can order the set now from your local game store, WizKids or Amazon. Notably, they mini comes in a collectors box that resembles the original Monster Manual. Below, we take a closer look at all the details.

Pulp (Rough Edges): Roger Torrey was one of the leading authors of hardboiled detective fiction for the pulps during the Thirties and Forties, starting out in BLACK MASK and writing for a number of other pulps as well, including SPICY DETECTIVE, PRIVATE DETECTIVE, and Street & Smith’s DETECTIVE STORY. 

Clark Ashton Smith (Swords & Stitchery): But the alien plant cycle won’t be denied because the Aihais and their predecessors the Yorhis are hoarders of ancient forbidden secrets sequestered away in lost valleys of a grim and highly dangerous Mars. For Warriors of the Red Planet campaign ‘This is a world where mankind has made his mark & then stumbled into the fires of his own nuclear fall from grace.

Horror (Frontier Partisans): I guess I figured that the best antidote to the horror show of our contemporary dumpster-fire-amid-a-train-wreck was an evening reading a horror yarn. Lucky for me, Lane Jacobson of Paulina Springs Books had him a copy of Stephen Graham Jones’ brand new The Buffalo Hunter Hunter for me.

Toys (Rip Jagger Dojo): Adorning most of the comic books of my early years were copious ads enticing money from the pockets of youngsters already ensnared in the imaginative adventures of some hero or other. They fed on the notion that the impulses demanding action which fed the bristling imaginations of youth would extend yet further. These ads were often well crafted, sometime by the same talents which made the comic story itself, a published variation of the 80’s action hero cartoons which blended commerce and entertainment in arguably less than purely fair ways for fanciful youngsters.

Fantasy (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Sword & Sorcery paperbacks after 1965 is a rapidly expanding publishing category that takes the average year from four or five publications to dozens a year by 1978. This explosion in S&S was fueled first by Donald A. Wollheim’s unauthorized version of The Lord of the Rings then by Lancer’s reprinting of the Conan stories. But what of the years before 1965? What did a Conan fan do before 1966?

Mens Magazines (Paperback Warrior): Believe it or not, Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham are all the way up to issue 11 now of their Men’s Adventure Quarterly Magazine. They just keep churning these books out and each one of them is just a real masterpiece of vintage fiction from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. This new issue is available now and I thankfully have my copy. I love the whole UFO and alien thing.