Ghost Stories (Wormwoodiana): The latest issue of the M.R. James journal Ghosts & Scholars is now available. Issue 47 has been guest edited by Helen Kemp, with cover artwork by Loretta Nikolic.

Forthcoming (The Obelisk): Bizarchives, Issue 7 will feature stories from stalwarts such as A. Cuthbertson, M.S. Jones, C.P. Webster, and Arbogast. New pens will also make their debuts in blood-red ink. Issue 7 will have it all, from weird horror to science fiction and high fantasy. There will be noir too, plus a loving tribute to the mighty work of “Big” Dave Martel.

Horror (Rip Jagger Dojo): Conjure Wife is Fritz Leiber’s first novel. It tells the story of a relatively young college professor and his wife, who just so happens to be witch. She uses her spells and such to protect her chosen man and help him along in his career. When he discovers her little notions, he stupidly destroys them thinking them whims.

Tolkien (Imaginative Conservative): Happily, J.R.R. Tolkien offers a rich and extended meditation on the Just War tradition in his novels The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, an exploration the Peter Jackson movie adaptations hint at but hardly exhaust. The Just War tradition has its roots in the great minds of Christendom, from Augustine to Aquinas. Given Tolkien’s background, we should not be surprised to find him in sympathy with it.

James Bond (James Bond First Editions): This being a jamesbondfirsteditions.co.uk blog, the hunt was, of course, to see whether there was any good Bond stuff. And, I’m pleased to say that there really was. While most collectors cannot always guarantee that they’ll find the particular author they collect, the one thing I’ve always found I can rely on is being able to spot least a few good Ian Fleming books.

Forthcoming (DMR Books): On November 8, 2024, DMR Books will release a special Centennial Edition of Merritt’s classic proto-sword-and-sorcery novel. This edition will include the author’s preferred text (which has only appeared in book form twice before), as well as nearly two dozen vintage illustrations and previously unpublished ephemera from the Merritt estate.

Pastiche (Black Gate): Pastiche — basically, licensed fan-fic — has been around as long as there has been fiction, but certain properties “lock in” on it; becoming sometimes so richly filled with authorized sequels, continuations or standalones, that the pastiche comes to outweigh the original work. BG’s Bob Byrne might tell me I’m wrong, and has the chops to do so, but I think Sherlock Homes probably outweighs every other character for stories written by hands other than the original author. But in the fantasy realm, that nod must go to Robert E. Howard, and of all his creations, to Conan of Cimmeria.

Games (Kickstarter): This is far from Conan’s first appearance in a tabletop game, but Conan: The Hyborian Age presents a fresh take on the material and on gameplay, with easily understood rules and a focus on the adventures themselves, letting everyone work together to spin yarn after yarn of high adventure without being limited by rules and references.

RPG (Grognardia): While I was at Gamehole Con, I attended several panels featuring luminaries of the hobby. One of the best dealt with the history of TSR from the late 1970s through its purchase by Wizards of the Coast. Mike Mearls served as its moderator, but the real attraction were the panelists: Jeff Grubb, Ed Greenwood, Steve Winter, and David “Zeb” Cook. They’re all depicted in the photograph above, taken by a friend of mine who also attended the panel.

Review (Ken Lizzi): Flame and Crimson is Brian Murphy’s affectionate yet fair examination and analysis of the Sword-and-Sorcery sub-genre of Fantasy. (Disclaimer: Brian is an acquaintance. So factor in whatever bias you like to what follows.) Published in 2019, F&C adds a significant component to the renaissance of S&S.

Greyhawk (Dungeons and Dragons Fan): What official Greyhawk content is on DMsGuild? Currently, there are a number of official Greyhawk materials available on DMsGuild, all of which are for older editions of D&D. Some of the most popular include:

Authors (The Obelisk): Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994) was also that kind of guy, although he probably had better manners. Born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, Wagner grew up in ancient Appalachia as the son of a TVA official. Wagner attended Kenyon College in the 1960s before pursuing a M.D. in psychiatry from the University of North Carolina.

Cinema (Art of the Movies): Vampires are among the oldest and most enduring cinematic bogeyman, but between Murnau’s seminal Nosferatu in 1922 and Werner Herzog’s remake in 1979, there was little in the way of innovation.

History (Old Salt): The Battle of Leyte Gulf was fought eighty years ago this week between the US and Australian navies and the Imperial Japanese Navy.  It was the largest naval battle of World War II and by some standards the largest naval battle in history. Fought between October 23-26, 1944, it was actually a series of battles that spanned over more than 100,000 square miles of sea and involved more than 800 ships and 1,800 aircraft.

James Bond (MI-6-HQ): The very first screen appearance of James Bond 007, made in 1954 for US TV channel CBS. Bond’s task is to destroy the evil Le Chiffre, and his plan is to force him to lose a large sum of money at the gambling tables of Casino Royale.

History (James LaFond): Over a hundred years ago a novelist, Harold Lamb, wrote three historical novels with a great impact on pulp fiction: Alexander [a book I read for my 9th grade history report], The Wolf Chaser, a novel of Genghis Khan, and Tamerlane: Conqueror of the Earth. Robert E. Howard’s superb, Lord of Samarkand was based on and inspired by the latter.

New (Rough Edges): LAIR OF THE SERPENT QUEEN is the third exciting entry in the critically acclaimed Snakehaven saga, following the adventures of soldier and swordsman Jorras Trevayle in a world where death may strike from any direction without warning. New York Times bestselling author James Reasoner spins another breathtaking tale of sword and sorcery action in a brilliantly inventive and compelling setting. If you haven’t begun exploring Snakehaven yet, now is the time to start!

RPG (Grognardia): Consequently, I always took great interest in language-related articles in Dragon or other RPG periodicals. Issue #66 (October 1982) featured several of these, all of which left a lasting impression on me. The first, which I’ll discuss in this post, was “”Thieves’ Cant: A primer for the language of larceny” by Aurelio Locsin.

Science Fiction (Adventures Fantastic): Today, October 21, marks the birth of Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977). Hamilton isn’t well remembered outside of pulp aficionados, and we aren’t getting any younger, are we guys? Hamilton wrote for the pulps, beginning with “The Monster-God of Mamurth” in the August 1926 issue of Weird Tales. Much of Hamilton’s early fiction was published in Weird Tales.

Horror (Imaginative Conservative): Like Hawthorne again, Poe seems to have been very little influenced by the common-sense realism of the eighteenth-century English novel. What has been known in our time as the romantic sensibility reached him from two directions: the Gothic tale of Walpole and Monk Lewis, and the poetry of Coleridge. Roderick Usher is a “Gothic” character taken seriously;

Science Fiction (Dark Worlds Quarterly): The Pulp era played with many older ideas from Science Fiction’s earliest days. The concept of shrinking so small to pass into other worlds was popular after 1919. Today you will say, oh yah, I saw that on Ant-Man. (Some may say, no, that’s, Ray Palmer, the Atom, over at DC.) Long before Marvel or DC Comics existed the idea of looking into the atom was found in fiction.

Horror (National Library Ireland): The story, “Gibbet Hill,” was uncovered by Stoker enthusiast Brian Cleary, who found this gem in an 1890 Christmas supplement of the Daily Express Dublin Edition. The story  was unknown even to Stoker biographers and literary scholars for over 130 years.

Science Fiction (Paperback Warrior): Author Jack Finney (1911-1995) authored a number of short stories for glossy magazines like Collier’s and Cosmopolitan. His career kick-started when he won a literary award from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. His first novel was 5 Against the House, originally published as a serial in Good Housekeeping in 1953 and compiled into a novel in 1954. He followed that success a year later with what is arguably his most well-known work, The Body Snatchers.

Horror (Fantasy Literature): For English author Algernon Blackwood, success as a writer came fairly late in life. Although today deemed one of the 20^th century’s greatest purveyors of supernatural and “weird” fiction, Blackwood evinced little interest in the field until he was in his mid-30s. Up till that time, he had tried his hand in numerous professions – from a dairy farmer in Canada to a NYC journalist, from hotel operator to model, from personal secretary to bartender.

Horror (Public Domain Review): A vampire is a thirsty thing, spreading metaphors like antigens through its victim’s blood. It is a rare situation that is not revealingly defamiliarized by the introduction of a vampiric motif, whether it be migration and industrial change in Dracula, adolescent sexuality in Twilight, or racism in True Blood.

Robert E. Howard (Black Gate): I think Howard was on to something as “Pigeons from Hell,” published posthumously in 1938 is a riveting tale of well-earned revenge, voodoo, and the walking dead. Two young travelers from New England decide to spend the night in an abandoned plantation mansion. The balustrade is covered by a flock of pigeons.

Games (Reviews from R’lyeh): This is the set-up for The Terror Beneath: An Investigative Roleplaying Games of Weird Folk Horror. Published by Osprey Games, best known for roleplaying games such as Hard City: Noir Roleplaying and Jackals – Bronze Age Fantasy Roleplaying, it is written by the author of Romance of the Perilous Land: A Roleplaying Game of British Folklore. It is roleplaying game based on the works of Arthur Machen, the Welsh horror writer, author of books such as The Great God Pan, The White People, and The Inmost Light.

Horror (Fantasy Literature): A Gothically inflected tale dealing with fratricide, madness, and a 20-foot-long spider monstrosity, Tenebrae was a deliciously morbid treat; one that had been rescued from over a century’s worth of oblivion by the fine folks at Valancourt Books. Now, I’d like to tell you of my follow-up Henham experience, this one in the supernatural vein and released almost a decade later. And that book is The Feast of Bacchus.

H. P. Lovecraft (Old Style Tales): Expanding on the themes introduced in “Dagon,” and presaging the fleshed-out Deep Ones of “The Shadow Over Innsmouth,” “The Doom That Came to Sarnath” is arguably Lovecraft’s best effort in crafting a story in the style of Lord Dunsany. Indeed, critic Kenneth Hite – in his seminal commentary Tour de Lovecraft – struggles to restrain himself in gushing praise for the tale.

Folklore (Frontier Partisans): This podcast operates under the auspices of Ballen Studios, the platform of MrBallen, a former Navy SEAL turned storyteller of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious. The host of Wartime Stories is a former Recon Marine, and his tales revolve around strange encounters of the military kind. Here’s a few…

Halloween (Ireland XO): In Ireland, Oíche Shamhna aka Halloween has officially heralded the beginning of the “dark half of the year” since pagan times.  Many of the old Celtic traditions marking the festival of Samhain (summer’s end) endure to this day, however the Victorian obsession with the macabre introduced others that reflected the times, such as predicting death, marriage or emigration. 

History (Crecanford): Druids are often thought of as peaceful and in touch with nature, but there was much Greco-Roman narrative to suggest these people, the leaders of the Celtic tribes, were barbaric savages. In this video I’ll look at the narratives about the Druids, and will interpret a passage by Tacitus that would suggest they took part in the largest ritual of human sacrifice we know about in Britain.