Blog Archives

Authors (The Silver Key): Andrew J. Offutt was a complex, deeply flawed man. A resident of rural Kentucky, Offutt was a husband and a father who supported his family with a successful insurance business, a job which he did not love and ultimately abandoned to make the bold leap into full-time writing. He was at […]

Fiction (Goodman Games): Jack Holbrook Vance was summoned into this world just over a century ago in San Francisco on August 28, 1916. A writer of multiple genres, he is best known to fans of Dungeons and Dragons for his Dying Earth novels, one of the inspirations for the magic system, often called ‘Vancian’, in […]

H. P. Lovecraft (DMR Books): The first thing to keep in mind is that this cache represents one of the great epistolary friendships in the history of letters. The two never met in person, but the Mutual Admiration Society CAS and HPL formed between them was forged of eldritch steel. Both considered the other the […]

Popular Culture (Adam Lane Smith): Much has been made about the oft-lamented shift from Hero to Antihero and the modern obsession with romanticizing evil. Most frequently, I’ve heard this complaint directed at modern western media’s fixation on selecting one unyielding human trash fire after another as every main character. There’s a reason modern book sales […]

Publishing (Walker’s Retreat): Rothfuss got outed as another Martin-tier procrastinator by his editor today. He ain’t the only one. ‘Kingkiller Chronicle’ Editor Believes Author Hasn’t Written Anything for Years https://t.co/SLM3CAGEXd— LJ Ramones (@LjRamones) July 29, 2020               This is a major problem with OldPub authors. Scalzi’s been hammered for it. […]

Tolkien (Scifi Scribe): If you want to create a high fantasy game that is in the same vein as Tolkien and checks off all those “woke” boxes you so desperately want to check off, you can easily do so without using any of the characters or places in his classic work. It isn’t that hard […]

Publishing (Pulp Archivist): The market is contracting, without signs of stopping, from at least the mid-2000s generational handover. Digital and its different margins have likely kept some of these magazines in business far longer than print runs can justify. It’s almost to the point where the established science fiction “fandom” does not and should not […]

Tolkien (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): The Next Tolkien Book: THE NATURE OF MIDDLE-EARTH. So, news is now out that there’s a new book of J.R.R.T. material due out next year (May 27th 2021).  Edited by Tolkien linguist Carl Hostetter, it’s called THE NATURE OF MIDDLE-EARTH, and its four hundred pages gather together many of the short essays […]

RPG (Grodog): Thinking through the mega-dungeons I’m familiar with, the stand out qualities that I love to play through, and the mega-dungeons that bring that to the table are:     Best Environments to Explore and Map:  Castle El Raja Key, Maure Castle, Caverns of Thracia, Foolsgrave.                              Most-Fun Encounters:  Castle Greyhawk, Foolsgrave, Rich Franks’ mega-dungeon. Most-Fun Puzzles, […]

T.V. (RMWC Reviews): In 1973, Tsuburaya Productions released several shows as part of the company’s 10th anniversary. The first one to see release was Fireman (or Magma Man in some markets), which began airing on Nippon Television on January 7, 1973, running until July for 30 episodes. Warfare (Aeoli Pera): The typical special forces trainee […]

RPG (Modiphius Entertainment): Before Conan, there was Kull! DANGER BREEDS CAUTION, AND ONLY A WARY MAN LIVES LONG IN THAT WILD COUNTRY WHERE THE HOT VENDHYAN PLAINS MEET THE CRAGS OF THE HIMELIANS AN HOUR’S RIDE WESTWARD OR NORTHWARD AND ONE CROSSED THE BORDER AND WAS AMONG THE HILLS WHERE MEN LIVED BY THE LAW […]

Fiction (Easily Distracted): Year’s Best Horror Stories 1976 The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV Edited by Gerald W. Page (1976 DAW) Lifeguard by Arthur Byron Cover:A sharp diamond of a story told in the first-person and saying what needs to be said about youth’s expiring ambitions, the narrow horizon of small town life, summertime, […]