Greyhawk (Greykawkery): Leading off of course is the mad antics of the CULTISTS. Those who aren’t familiar with them from my first run of comics (2007-2011) can find them in the links above or even in the most recent issues of Oerth Journal. What trouble will this duo cause this time? I will feature the other three comic series in the coming weeks. For now, enjoy!

Review (Silver Key): Neither Beg Nor Yield is an ass-kicking sword-and-sorcery anthology that you should read. This thing is a beast, an obvious labor of love. 456 pages. 20 stories. Illustrated throughout. An incredible lineup of authors. How the hell did editor Jason Waltz manage to land this group, a who’s-who of fantasy writers? Each story gets an outro penned by Waltz, a smattering of biographical info coupled with his insights on what makes each story fit the prescribed “sword-and-sorcery attitude” that unites each of the stories.

Comic Books (Hyborian Reviews): I know I’m late to the party here but I just had the opportunity to finish up Titan Comics wrap up on their first year of Conan the Barbarian, namely #12, and what an amazing year it has been. This last issue wraps up a lot of stuff that started back in the first 4 issues last year and now that story arc truly feels complete. And how did it all go down? With a hell of a bang that can only be descriped as E.P.I.C!

Comic Books (Rough Edges): When the latest incarnation of the Conan comic book series began being published, I decided to read the individual issues as they came out, just like I did in the old days—the difference being that I read them digitally instead of on cheap newsprint. (For the record, I prefer cheap newsprint over digital, but I prefer digital over slick paper.) After finishing the first story arc, however, I decided to wait for the collected edition of the next arc. It just seemed simpler that way, plus I get to read the stories one right after the other.

Conventions (Tellers of Weird Tales): In 1985, the World Fantasy Convention was held at the Doubletree Hotel in Tucson, Arizona. The dates were October 31 to November 3, 1985. The souvenir book of the convention is entitled World Tales, and it was made to look like an issue of “The Unique Magazine.” Not only does it look like an issue of Weird Tales, it is superior in quality to any issue published up until that time.

Authors (DMR Books): A little over a week ago, John C. Hocking called me and told me about Howard Andrew Jones. Since then, several websites have reported on Howard’s condition. To put it very briefly, Mr. Jones is suffering from advanced, terminal brain cancer. I decided to write my own post to spread awareness of that as far as possible.

James Bond (Modern Age Journal): Even that small minority of the Earth’s population who wouldn’t normally watch a James Bond movie can quote that exchange from Goldfinger, spoken as Bond follows the progress of a laser beam pointed at that portion of his lower anatomy most required for his continued success as a womanizer.

Writing (Nerdrotic): GET OFF YOUR ARSE! George R.R. Martin BLAMES “FASCISM” For Late on Books… BRUH?!!

Fiction (Jack Carr USA): At dawn on Sunday, October 23, 1983, a truck laden with explosives crashed into the headquarters and barracks building of the U.S. Marine Corps peacekeeping force in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen in the largest non-nuclear explosion on record.  What followed is a story of resilience and heroism as warriors rose from the ashes to rescue their fellow brothers in arms in one of the greatest rescue stories in history.   

Science Fiction (Kairos): As the literary landscape shifts, we might be witnessing a significant transition in genre dominance. Science fiction, once a staple of speculative fiction, may be losing ground to fantasy, particularly among younger readers like Generation Z.

Streaming (Jon del Arroz): Rings Of Power is an abomination of JRR Tolkien’s legacy and is definitely not a good Lord of the Rings offering from Prime Video. Why do they lash out at fans for their failures? Get FOR STEAM AND COUNTRY for a great fantasy book:

Star Wars (Nerdotic Daily): STAR WARS OUTLAWS IS A MASTERPIECE!

Fantasy (Library Ladder): Jack Vance has been described as the greatest prose stylist in the history of speculative fiction. The creativity of his worldbuilding is legendary, and no one wrote self-absorbed, amoral rogues, rascals and scoundrels like he did.

Science Fiction (Poul Anderson Contributor Articles): This article outlines and dates the three phases of Poul Anderson’s career as a writer, with representative examples taken from his works. Considering how vast Anderson’s output was from 1947 to his death in 2001, it will not be practical or desirable to cite more than a few of his many short stories and novels.  And one weakness of this essay is how I have completely ignored his mysteries, historical novels, and non fictional works.

Fantasy (Dark City Underground): One of the real pleasures of my teenage years was reading the space operas of John Brunner, which mostly appeared in Ace Double Book form, sometimes taking up both sides. Except for Leigh Brackett and some of Edmond Hamilton, I couldn’t handle most space opera after I reached about age fifteen. But Brunner was both a superb writer of swift colorful action stories and a true citizen of the world,

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Reactor Mag): Edgar Rice Burroughs is one of the pioneers of science fiction, and the exploits of Earth-born adventurer John Carter on the planet Mars are among his best works. A few years ago, I looked at the first book in the Barsoom series, A Princess of Mars. Since the summer is the perfect time to read books full of pulpy action and adventure, today I’m diving into the second and third adventures in that series, The Gods of Mars and The Warlord of Mars.

Men’s Fiction (Bloody Spicy Books): So, I decided to make up a little list. Now, I saved series titles for another list in the future, just focusing on stand-alones and series hopefuls. You know, where the weird stuff lies. Since I covered most of these books on the blog, it’s a little primer to all the old reviews.

Appendix N (Goodman Games): Much as I’d like to hope that Gary Gygax read Harold Lamb, he’s unlikely to have found his way to any of Lamb’s most influential work. It’s not that Lamb wasn’t in print. From the 1940s on, his histories and biographies were a mainstay on library shelves, and many modern libraries retain his books to this day. But as fine as they are – and some of them are very fine indeed – Lamb’s histories and biographies weren’t the texts that were important to Appendix N.

Science Fiction (Por Por Books): Every sci-fi fan who grew up during the Baby Boomer era is familiar with DAW Books, an imprint founded by Donald A. Wollheim, who was an author and editor of note in the genre. Over at PBS, there’s an interesting documentary about ‘Casa Susanna,’ a summer camp in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York where, in the 1950s and 1960s, crossdressing men would go to enjoy their fetish among others with similar attitudes.

T.V. (Dave Scripted): Shogun Understands Violence

James Bond (Rip Jagger Dojo): For Your Eyes Only is the first Bond short story collection and it’s pretty uneven. In “From a View to a Kill” Bond investigates the assassination of a motorcycle dispatch-rider and the theft of his top-secret documents. Pretty standard stuff, though the enemy plot seems a bit overly super-spyish. In “For Your Eyes Only” Bond avenges the murder of a friend of his boss alongside the murdered man’s daughter.

Cold Steel (Cerberusarms): Katana VS Longsword – The Sad TRUTH!

D&D (Grognardia): My own sense of what a “barbarian” was had been informed by two sources: ancient history and fantasy literature, particularly Howard’s stories of Conan the Cimmerian. The class that Gygax presented in issue #63, with its proficiencies in survival and suspicion of magic, was vaguely reminiscent of both, but still somehow its own distinct thing.

History (Frontier Partisans): Two-hundred-and-fifty years ago, a short, sharp frontier conflict along the Upper Ohio River shaped the fate of the continent. Yet the conflict — known as Lord Dunmore’s War after the title of the Royal Governor of the colony of Virginia — is little remembered today. It is overshadowed by the events in New England that were rapidly sliding toward confrontation between the American colonists and England that would explode into war in April 1775.

Fiction (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Fu Manchu is one of the great villains of Pulp fiction. Sax Rohmer created the character in Collier’s Magazine, Feb 15, 1913 with “The Zayat Kiss”. Collier’s was a slick, but the Pulps copied Fu repeatedly in stories “Skull-Face” (Weird Tales, October-December 1929) by Robert E. Howard and “Hawk Carse” by Anthony Gilmore. Like Tarzan, Zorro and Captain Blood, he is an icon from the beginning of the 20th Century.

Review (Rough Edges): I’ve been reading Thomas B. Dewey’s books off and on for close to 60 years since discovering his series about the private eye known only as Mac while I was in high school. He’s never failed to entertain me. He’s one of those writers who never achieved huge success but published steadily for 25 years and was always well-regarded by readers and critics. Black Gat Books has just reprinted one of his stand-alones, HUNTER AT LARGE.

James Bond (Forgotten Weapons): Today Caleb Daniels, author of “Licensed Troubleshooter”, joins me to talk about the guns shown in Dr. No, the very first James Bond film. Somehow, the film manages to get every single gun detail wrong – sometimes with nested errors within errors. Even Bond’s iconic Walther PPK never actually appears in the film! And yet, it remains a great film…so what were all the gun nerd quibbles with it?

Games (Kairos): Last week’s post on Sony’s downfall from the height of the video game industry drew multiple mentions of Sega’s similar collapse 30 years ago. Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. In that vein, let’s take a look at the fall of the Blue Giant.

Weird Fiction (Marzaat): Review: “The Phantom Farmhouse”, Seabury Quinn, 1923. This 1923 story is odd in its combination of supernatural elements. Our narrator is Weatherby, a clergyman staying at the New Briarcliff Sanitarium in Maine.

Clark Ashton Smith (Axis Mundi): Clark ashton smith wrote the short stories about the fictional continent of Zothique in the 30s, and they were first published in the magazine Weird tales, and in June 1970, collected and re-edited in a single volume. Zothique is the imaginative representation of the intrinsic value of animism and of What. The same author in a letter to L. Sprague de Camp dated 1951 describes the lands where his cycle of tales takes place.

Conventions (Ethan Sabatella): From Thursday the 15th to Sunday the 18th, I joined over 2,000 fellow fans of Howard Phillips Lovecraft, Weird Fiction, and Horror for a weekend filled with panels of experts on esoteric knowledge, journeys through the ancient streets of Providence, and more mind-boggling artefacts and tomes than could every be imagined.

History (Dan Davis History): In Bronze Age Iberia there was a powerful society that dominated the region for over six hundred years. This was a strictly hierarchical society ruled by powerful chieftains, or perhaps kings and queens, supported by a wealthy aristocracy, a labouring class, and slaves. They interred their dead with standardised grave goods that marked their age, sex, and social rank. The elite men were given copper and bronze weapons while the elite women wore gold or silver jewellery and sometimes beautiful silver diadems.