Blog Archives
sChuck Dixon’s Siege of the Black Citadel is a brand new novel from Castalia House. Dixon started writing King Kull stories for the comic Savage Sword of Conan in 1985. If I am correct his first Conan story was “Winter of the Wolf” in The Savage Sword of Conan #133 (February 1987). If my spread […]
S. M. Stirling’s Conan: Blood of the Serpent is the first in a new period of Conan the Cimmerian pastiche novels. What is a pastiche you ask? A pastiche is an artistic work in a style that imitates that of another work, artist, or period. L. Sprague de Camp began writing Conan pastiche stories in […]
Robert M. Price has been a fixture in the world of the Lovecraftian small press for decades. He published Crypt of Cthulhu and other various Cryptic Publications. He also edited fourteen anthologies for Chaosium, and four anthologies for Fedogan & Bremer digging out all sorts of obscure Mythos related stories unfamiliar to the average reader. […]
Sensor Sweep: Paperback Fanatic, Ben Bova, Tros of Samothrace, Warhammer
Monday , 29, April 2019 Sensor Sweep 4 CommentsPopular Culture (Men’s Pulp Mags): Justin Marriott and Paul Bishop are two of my favorite pulp culture mavens. (“Pulp culture” is a term I borrowed from the book of that name by Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson and expanded to encompass both early pulp magazines and pulp art and later magazines, books and movies that have pulpy DNA, such as men’s adventure magazines and action/adventure […]
Sensor Sweep: David Lindsay, Robots, Hollow City, H. Beam Piper, Jonah Hex
Tuesday , 9, April 2019 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentLit-Crit (Jewish Review of Books): It’s a bit surprising to come across Harold Bloom’s confession that the literary work that has been his greatest obsession is not, say, Hamlet or Henry IV, but a relatively little-known 1920 fantasy novel. After all, Bloom is our most famous bardolater. When I took an undergraduate class with him at Yale, he […]
Sensor Sweep: Moon Pool, Talismans, Sea Wolf, Jerry Pournelle, New Heinlein
Monday , 18, February 2019 Sensor Sweep 6 CommentsFiction (DMR Books): One hundred years ago today, A. Merritt‘s novella/short novel, “The Conquest of the Moon Pool,” was unleashed upon an eager public. The story which spawned it, “The Moon Pool,” had been met with such an outpouring of enthusiasm by the readership of All-Story Weekly that the pulp’s legendary editor, Robert H. Davis, […]
Sensor Sweep: RPG Theory, Paizo, Grimdark vs. YA, Lankhmar RPG, Prydain
Monday , 4, February 2019 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentRPG (RPG Pundit): There’s a whole generation of new D&D gamers who missed all the long history of people studying and debating RPG theory, and the thinking behind the conclusion that regular RPGs are not a good medium for ‘making story’. And a lot of them have been fed the same old bullshit as in […]
Sensor Sweep: Skullsplitter Dice, Fantasy divisions, Future Firearms, Samson Pollen
Monday , 21, January 2019 Sensor Sweep 4 CommentsFiction (DMR Books): I have a real attachment to the supernatural tales that appeared in what is often called the golden age of the English ghost story. Ranging from around 1880 to somewhere in the 1920s its boundaries are as vague as its achievements are remarkable. For a time, in that difficult to imagine world […]
Sensor Sweep: John Myers Myers, Dave Duncan, Mental State, Warcraft III
Monday , 5, November 2018 Sensor Sweep 8 CommentsPublishing (DMR Books): We’re now open for submissions! You have until the end of November to send us your best sword and sorcery stories. All the details can be found here. We’re looking forward to discovering some talented new authors! Fiction (DMR Books): Author John Myers Myers passed on thirty years ago today. If for no other […]
Sensor Sweep: CAS, REH, and HPL; Roger Zelazny; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Medieval Tales
Monday , 8, October 2018 Sensor Sweep 3 CommentsFiction (DMR Books): Today would be the one hundred and fourth birthday of Donald A. Wollheim. When it comes to a debate regarding which editor had the greatest overall impact on the field of science fiction, Wollheim often gets shortchanged–in my opinion–in favor of Hugo Gernsback and/or John W. Campbell. However, that neglect pales in comparison to the […]
We continue reading Robert E Howard’s Conan yarns in publication order, and noting how they have improved with age. Often dismissed as a mere boyish adventure tales, adult eyes rereading these alleged boy’s stories will see depth to them.
Sensor Sweep: Dungeon Dwellers, Shambleau, Dumb Barbarians
Monday , 4, December 2017 Sensor Sweep 6 CommentsRPG (Blackgate.com): I’m still unpacking the boxes I brought home from the Fall 2017 Games Plus auction. There’s so many SF and fantasy board games being published these days that it’s impossible to keep up. But you know, I do my best. A week after the auction, I dropped by Games Plus in Mount Prospect […]