Blog Archives
sThe Pulp Swordsmen: Corun of Conahur
Sunday , 13, May 2018 Pulp Swordsmen, Short Fiction 18 CommentsSword and sorcery fiction was a casualty in the pages of Weird Tales magazine when it went bimonthly and had a new editor in 1940. The sub-genre did live on with some entries in Unknown/Unknown Worlds. Less known are some stories that showed up in Fantastic Adventures and Planet Stories. The stories that appeared in […]
E. Hoffmann Price (1898-1988) is remembered today as the guy who met H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith in person. Price had served in the U.S. Army during WW1 in the horse cavalry, with postings in the Philippines and France. He never saw combat. After the war, he attended the U.S. […]
Sensor Sweep: Ivy Frost, Rebel Songsters, Dying Earths, Tarzan, and Clark Ashton Smith
Monday , 30, April 2018 Sensor Sweep 3 CommentsPulp Fiction (Haffner Press): THE COMPLETE IVY FROST Donald Wandrei Introduction by D. H. Olson Cover by Raymond Swanland Decorated Endsheets 18 Double-page Chris Kalb-designed Chapter Spreads 700+ pageSmythe-sewn HardcoverPre-Order price: $45 Cinema (Pulp Catholic): I’m reviewing the old MCU films in preparations for Infinity War. The Star Wars fiasco of this past Christmas has me very concerned for […]
In January 1939, had you perused the magazines stands, you would have seen a new pulp magazine, Strange Stories. The magazine was published by Better Publications, the company that put out the pulp magazines with “Thrilling “ in the title. Strange Stories was a bimonthly magazine that lasted for 13 issues February 1939 to February […]
In the January 1937 issue of Weird Tales, Clifford Ball of Astoria, New York, had this to say in the letters section (“The Eyrie”): “I have been a constant reader of your magazine since 1925, when some author’s conception of weirdness was a gigantic ape dragging a half-naked female about a jungle, and I have […]
Karl Edward Wagner’s story, “Neither Brute nor Human” to me, is one of the best satires on fantasy publishing that I have ever read. The story originally published in the World Fantasy Convention Program Book for 1983. ISFDB.org page has a question mark as to whether it is trade paperback size or not. I have […]
Tales From the Magician’s Skull #1
Sunday , 8, April 2018 Just Released, Publications, Short Fiction 2 CommentsFour weeks back, I received the first issue Tales From the Magician’s Skull directly from editor Howard A. Jones. This is a brand new magazine published by Goodman Games. Howard has this to say about the genesis of the magazine: “Strange but true: this project didn’t begin life as a magazine, and I didn’t plan […]
This past week, a friend who had called me up told me about this Gardner Dozois quote: “While we’re talking about fantasy, I’ve been reading a lot of what’s being called “the New Sword & Sorcery” lately, stuff by people like Joe Abercrombie, Scott Lynch, K.J. Parker, Daniel Abraham, and it struck me what the […]
I wrote a review of The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly two years ago. For various reasons, I did not read the online stories as they appeared since then. I waited for the next volume (#2) that covers 2011-2013. The book has a nice cover by Robert Zoltan that is better than most of the […]
A year and a half ago, I wrote a post about David Gemmell and how in my opinion he saved sword and sorcery fiction in the 1990s. I think it was after that that I found out the Legends anthologies. The books are subtitled “Stories in Honour of David Gemmell.” I was not familiar with […]
I love heavily illustrated books about fictional genres and publishing– Geoffrey O’Brien’s Hardboiled America, Lee Server’s Danger is My Business, Randy Broecker’s Fantasy of the 20th Century being some examples. A new addition is Grady Henrdrix’s Paperbacks from Hell (“The Twisted History of ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Fiction). This book had some buzz last year […]
One could make the argument that Fredric Brown (1906-1972) is the most important crime writer of the late 1940s/early 1950s. He certainly seems important enough to warrant two separate reprint series, one in the 1980s and one now. Something I can’t think of any other crime writer from the period. You probably know Fredric Brown […]