Sword & Sorcery (Cobalt Jade): Without dispute, pulp author Robert E. Howard invented the fantasy character trope of The Barbarian Hero, specifically with his creation Conan. But the roots were laid before that in the Tarzan tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli. Both pitted a stoic, nature-wise man (or boy) of the wilds against corrupt human civilization. Conan went further, though, in his manly-man appetites for pleasure and acclaim.

Comic Books (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Here are some odd Bronze Age Sword & Sorcery comics you might have missed. All the big companies (Marvel, DC, Gold Key Charlton) tried out tales of heroic fantasy, usually in their horror comics, as an experiment in the early 1970s (some in the 1960s). By 1980s, after Conan the Barbarian and other S&S comics had a firm grip on the market, these S&S tales were just part-and-parcel of writing a strange tale.

Conan (Sprague de Camp Fan): Conan the Avenger, Lancer Books, 1968 contains The Return of Conan by Bjorn Nyberg and L. Sprague de Camp; and “The Hyborian Age, Part 2” by Robert E. Howard. (I will be discussing “The Hyborian Age” in a few weeks, as the final entry for this series.) Chapters 2 – 5 of The Return of Conan were first published as the novella Conan the Victorious and appeared in Fantastic Universe Science Fiction, September 1957.

Tolkien (Gizmodo): These paperback editions sparked the commercial fantasy genre. According to the late David G. Hartwell, a leading figure in US fantasy and science fiction publishing, what the 1970s reading public wanted was “not more fantasy but more Tolkien”. That desire was fulfilled with books like Terry Brooks’ Shannara series and Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, as well as the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons.

Horror (MSN): Despite being a country known for its rich culture and folklore, Ireland very rarely finds the more horrifying elements of its mythology portrayed in video games. If you grew up in Ireland, particularly in the sparse wide-open countryside far from any urban city, your friends, parents, and relatives would have most likely told you stories of the many morbid creatures and spirits that supposedly walked the plains of Ireland. Everything from The Morrigan to the well-known Banshee would have kept you up late at night as a child.

RPG (R’lyeh Reviews): Conan the Thief is a supplement for Robert E. Howard’s Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of published by Modiphius Entertainment. It is the first in the ‘Conan the…’ series of supplements which focus on and take their inspiration from Conan himself at various stages of his life and what he was doing. Over this series, the supplements will track our titular character’s growth and progress as he gains in skills and abilities and talents.

Cinema (Unz): With The Northman, Mr. Eggers takes us back to a sacralized world, where the gods are ever-present, fate is set, and glory awaits the strong. It is subversive just to suggest there’s an alternative to modernity, even if that alternative is frightening. That’s why some critics don’t like this movie. The film is visually stunning, with lingering shots of vast glaciers and idyllic countryside. While it’s set in Iceland, only some of the filming took place there; the majority was in Northern Ireland.

Robert E. Howard (DMR Books): The other day, I got to thinking about how Conan/Hyborian Age/REH fans picture the Stygians. Part of that was the result of speculating on the plotline of the upcoming S.M. Stirling Conan pastiche, Blood of the Serpent. Also, I’ve had numerous encounters on social media with haphazard and midwit Conan fans who simply haven’t read or understood the material. Let’s take a look at the physical stature of the Stygians in comparison to Conan and various races of the Hyborian Age world—according to Robert E. Howard.

Warhammer (False Machine): “Yea O Son of the West, ye shall have thy will and shall write for Black Library, and ye shall be prolific indeed, ye shall be the destroyer of one world and the cornerstone of the new. Rare shall thy skillset be, a truly capacious knowledge for Lore combined with a neat eye for the way belief systems interact with character and an unusually detailed yet lively synthesis of the working structure of an extensive paracosm.

Fantasy (Goodman Games): Roger Zelazny’s most popular fiction, be it his Amber Series, his brilliant Lord of Light, or the subject of this essay, Jack of Shadows, showcase the inherent fascinations that inform much of his work. Not that a grab-bag of story elements alone could possibly define an author – particularly one as creatively unrestrained as Zelazny.

Tolkien (Sacnoths Scriptorium): So, there’s the famous episode where JRRT, a year after THE  HOBBIT was published, angrily repudiated Germany’s anti-Semitic laws — specifically by refusing to make an official statement declaring that he was not Jewish, such a statement being required by his prospective publisher for a German edition, which wd have been the first translation into another language (See LETTERS OF JRRT, page 37, letter of 25 July 1938 for details).

Board Games (Sandpoint Reader): Writ large, “Eldritch Horror” is an homage to the works of early-20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, who in recent years seems to be experiencing something of a cultural renaissance, not least of which through the HBO series Lovecraft Country. In the game, up to eight players choose from 12 characters — all with their own back stories, attributes, abilities and tools — who are tasked with working together to investigate mysteries on a global scale with the goal of stopping one of several Ancient Ones whose arrival spells the destruction of our world.

Cinema (Up and Down These Mean Streets): After the fact, word drifted in that Fred Ward died on Sunday May 9 at the age of 79. Got to note it here since — as pictured above — Fred was the first to essay the role of Charles Willeford’s Miami cop Hoke Moseley in the 1990 film Miami Blues. In addition, he served as Executive Producer, the guy who got the whole thing going.

RPG (The Other Side): My “Star Trek meets Cthulhu” campaign is known as BlackStar and I have detailed the ideas I have had here.  The game started out as a combination of various OSR-style games because that is what I was playing a lot at the time. But as time has gone on I have given it more thought and explored other RPG system options.  Every combination has its own features and its own problems.   Let’s look at all the options I have been considering.

Science Fiction (Grognardia): The science fiction stories written by A. Bertram Chandler were significant influences on Traveller. Indeed, Chandler’s most famous character, John Grimes, is in many ways an archetypal Traveller player character. He begins his career as lowly ensign in the Federation Survey Service, having many adventures along the way.

Review (DMR Books): Amidst this digital age it is maddening to stay abreast of the new books out there. Swords of the Four Winds isn’t a new book, it was independently published in 2013, but it is one that should certainly be on your radar. And what an amazing thing it is that an author, half a world away, can share his work with someone like me.

History (Chimney Sweep Reader): The Gunfight at the OK Corral is easily the most famous gunfight in American history. It has long since ascended into the ranks of mythology. Its participants, particularly Wyatt Earp, have been similarly elevated into the upper echelons of human consciousness…so much so that separating fact from fiction is surely a daunting task.

Cinema (Neotextcorp): William Friedkin blew the world’s mind with The French Connection, and years later, as he wanted to shoot something different for To Live and Die in L.A., he managed to produce a nail-biting sequence on the Los Angeles freeway. To limit the success of the film, however, solely on one hell of a scene would mean to do injustice to one of the most exciting action thrillers of the eighties. Friedkin’s 1985 film was based on a novel written by former U.S. Secret Service agent called Gerald Petievich.

James Bond (Paperback Warrior): Diamonds Are Forever is the fourth installment of Ian Fleming’s wildly successful James Bond series of spy-thrillers. It was originally published by Jonathan Cape in the U.K. in 1956. The novel’s central theme is diamond smuggling, a criminal operation that intrigued Fleming enough to not only use it as a plot, but also a non-fiction book he wrote in 1957, The Dimaond Smugglers. In 1971, the novel was adapted into the seventh James Bond film.

Horror (Bloody Spicy Books): So, Guy’s legendary Crabs series. I mean who wouldn’t dip their toe back in the world of cow-sized killer crabs first? The Crabs series is what Smith is most known for, seven books spanning from 1976 to 2019 plus a few chap books, some short stories and even a graphic novel. Oh, and an “unofficial” movie adaptation “Island Claws” written by The Creature from the Black Lagoon himself, Ricou Browning.

Pulp Hero (Rough Edges): Will Murray is back with his third novel featuring the iconic pulp hero character The Spider, following THE DOOM LEGION and FURY IN STEEL. As in those earlier novels, in SCOURGE OF THE SCORPION Murray brings in some heroes and villains used in other Popular Publications pulps, making it clear that all of Popular’s characters existed in the same universe.

Fiction (Paperback Warrior): British author Robert Leader (b. 1938) had worked as a Merchant Marine, bartender, and a factory worker before becoming a full-time novelist. He wrote over 200 short stories and sold them to magazines like Reveille, Titbits, London Evening News and London Mystery. He found success authoring a series of 10 espionage thrillers starring British agent Simon Larren. Collectively, British publisher Robert Hale published over 40 of his novels, most authored under his real name or pseudonyms like Robert Charles or Robert Brandon.

Camping (Art of Manliness): An effective packing technique whether you’re a soldier headed out for a deployment or a civilian headed out for vacation, the Ranger or Army Roll is a method of “folding” your clothes that keeps them both compact and tidy. It makes your clothes look like tight, well-rolled burritos, and minimizes the amount they wrinkle, as well as their footprint in your bag. Ranger-rolled clothes take up less space in your suitcase and keep it better organized. On the latter front, you can also roll up outfits — shirt, socks, underwear — together into a single, action-ready pouch.

History (Joy V Spicer): The term ‘hussar’ historically derives from the cavalry of medieval Hungary, which consisted mainly of Serb warriors under Matthias Corvinus, the King of Hungary and Croatia (1458-1490). During the 16th century, the medieval-style lancers in the army of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth were replaced with the Polish hussars who would form the main body of the cavalry.