Weird Tales (Fandom Pulse): It seems as if skinsuits are a popular past-time of OldPub writers who still haven’t fled the old system. Even legacy magazines from the heyday of the pulp era aren’t safe from crusaders injecting their tired politics into them, which a pulp fiction scholar noticed about Jonathan Mayberry’s revival of Weird Tales.

D&D (The Quartering): Elon Musk To Buy D&D As Well As Magic: The Gathering To Save From Woke Collapse? Gary Gygax Erased!

Comic Books (Porpor Books): Daniels’s ‘Comix,’ and in 1975, ‘Living in Fear,’ were touchstone treatments of prominent, fan-favorite topics, and possessed intrinsic appeal to those Baby Boomers who were edging into middle age and willing to buy books that evoked nostalgia.

Cinema (Critical Drinker): Its a sequel nobody asked for, and it turned out to be a bloated, sluggish and clunky rehash of the 2000 Russell Crowe historical epic. Join me for my review of Gladiator 2.

Science Fiction (Adventures Fantastic): Today, as  I’m writing this, is November 7, the birthday of L. Sprague de Camp (1907-2000).. As I mentioned in the post on Poul Anderson two days ago, de Camp was one of the writers from the pulp era who was equally adept at both science fiction and fantasy.

History (Jolly Reiver): In this video I head to the Scottish Borders to visit Cauldshiels Loch where I retell the story of how American writer Washington Irving visited Walter Scott. Here, Scott told him a local legend of a water bull.

Writing (Wasteland & Sky): What the Hero’s Journey was started as Joseph Campbell’s attempt to find underlying patterns in all stories that form an overarching myth for all of humanity. What did stories have in common and what could be shared between them in a large overarching monomyth? He did not cobble a one size fits all formula to write stories, in fact not every story has the same mechanism or tropes, but each has at least some aspect that resonates with others.

D&D (Dungeons and Dragons Fan): Black Friday is finally upon us, and if you’re a Dungeons & Dragons player looking to save your hard earned gold pieces, the good news is that there are a number of smoking deals you can score without having to roll any Persuasion checks. To help you grab the perfect loot, we’ve sorted through the various online offerings to showcase a few deals worth looking into.

Tolkien (Sort of) (Jon del Arroz): Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim is just Hollywood using the J.R.R. Tolkien brand to produce its propaganda.

T.V. (Atom Valley Bulletin): The big dogs on the block for Saturday cartoon shows were William Hanna and Joseph Barbera from Hanna-Barbera Studios. The pair struck out on their own business after being released from the MGM movie studio where they worked making Tom & Jerry cartoon shorts.

Westerns (Western Fiction Review): This book starts off well with some tough, brutal scenes depicting the outlaw’s bloody crimes in the town of Paradise. The pace slows a little after that while Cole attempts to put together a posse. Each of the posse men is well drawn, each having their own memorable traits. Out on the trail, Cole finds himself at odds with one of them in particular and how this is resolved came as a surprise.

Gaming (Swordslore): We will be looking at how different theories surrounding the pre-Christian Celtic religion appears in GreedFall and what some of the inspirations the developers might have had when designing this part of the lore.

Writers (Black Gate): Franklin Robert Adams (1933 – 1990) only used his middle and last name on his books. He wrote twenty-six of them, in three different series, and edited nearly a dozen more.

His first and most famous series is called Horseclans. It’s set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, after a nuclear war, and begins on America’s great plains with tribal groups organized along Native American lines.

Fiction (Marzaat): Raw Feed (1992): The Night Mayor, Kim Newman, 1990.  Newman, in his Richie Quick section, writes with the snappy funny dialogue of 40’s film noir. The conceit of the city has overtones of Roger Zelazny’s The Dream Master.

Home Defense (Frontier Partisans): The Phoenix Rising Dragon’s Breath round produces an enormous wall of fire for 200+ yards compared to the other brand’s range of 100 feet. The incendiary compound burns at over 5000 degrees Fahrenheit. The “Super Dragon” was professionally developed and extensively computer and range tested to produce the highest quality, and most effective round of its type in the world.

Mythos (MDCLS): The Egyptian Book of the Dead (Pert Em Hru or “The Book of Going Forth by Day”) This ancient work concerns the beatification of the dead, who were imagined as reciting the various chapters in order and thereby gaining privileges in their new lives after death. The instructions and magical procedures contained within its pages protect the dead against the dangers they face in reaching the Afterlife.

Science Fantasy (Dark Worlds Quarterly): This time it is the classic novel, Earth’s Last Citadel by married team, C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner. The novel originally appeared in Argosy, April to July 1943. It was first reprinted in Fantastic Novels, July 1950. It made it to an ACE paperback in 1964. The fact that the book has been used over and over is a good sign of its quality. Since it has appeared so often there is plenty of artwork for the story, with Virgil Finlay illustrating it twice!

Horror (Swordslore): The idea of liminal spaces has been gaining traction online over the past several years, especially among communities of horror media fans. Images of spaces that are considered liminal (usually man-made rooms devoid of people or other lifeforms, illuminated by dimming light sources, and no apparent exit or entryways) .

Conan (Paperback Warrior): British publisher Titan Books began licensing Robert E. Howard’s Conan character from Heroic Signatures in 2022. The publisher has been very active in printing a new series of Conan the Barbarian comics and The Savage Sword of Conan magazine. In addition, the publisher has thrust the character into novels and novellas. The first of the stories was Conan: Lord of the Mount, published in September 2023 as an ebook and authored by Stephen Graham Jones.

Lovecraft (Swordslore): This past weekend, I had the chance to attend the 29th annual H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, Oregon! As with NecronomiCon back in August, I got to go with the talented writer and burgeoning Lovecraft scholar Erin Ròse Latta of the The Midnight Blue Sea.

RPG (Black Gate): In 1987, Gary Gygax put out a book entitled Role-Playing Mastery, which gave guidelines on how to excel as a player in role-playing games. At that time, there were essentially two versions of Dungeons and Dragons. The Original, or ‘Basic’ game, had evolved under Tom Moldvay’s rules development.

Crime Fiction (Marzaat): I had looked for Chandler in used bookstores, but he was never there. After reading The Big Book of the Continental Op, I really wanted to read him. So, I picked this one up at the library.

Radio (Ghoulish Delights): And with this, Joshua finally concludes his trilogy of ape-themed episodes of The Shadow with “The House of Horror”! The story features a kidnapped gorilla, a fortune teller, and a series of wealthy young socialites who vanish in a…

RPG (Black Gate): Before TSR created the Conan Role Playing Game with its own rules and conventions, they released two Conan adventure modules for use with AD&D, but with a few interesting rules additions, including Fear Checks, Luck Points, and more lenient Healing rules.