Blog Archives
sChristopher Tolkien: A Centennial Remembrance
Saturday , 23, November 2024 J. R. R. Tolkien Leave a commentThis is a guest post by Deuce: Yesterday marked the centennial of Christopher Tolkien‘s birth. Such an event is not a minor occasion. In his own way, Christopher was a titanic figure within the sphere of twentieth-century fantasy. In addition to that, he was a good man and an exemplary son. I intend to demonstrate […]
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: Classics, Steve Tompkins, Queen of the Black Coast, Gun Ghoul
Monday , 25, March 2019 Sensor Sweep 1 CommentCulture (Legends of Men): The primary professional association for classicists is the Society for Classical Studies. This was formerly called the American Philological Association. Mary Frances Williams, a Ph.D. in classics, former professor, and an independent researcher, decided to attend this year’s annual conference. There, she witnessed first hand how the classics field is becoming a […]
Science Fiction (Wired): Conventional wisdom holds that science fiction was written almost exclusively by men until the advent of feminism in the 1960s and ’70s. But when Lisa Yaszek, who teaches science fiction studies at Georgia Tech, went digging through old magazines, she discovered a very different story. Tolkien (Daily Mail): […]
Sensor Sweep: Horrors of the Hyborian Age, Tarzan, Keith Taylor, Atomic Tunnels!
Monday , 7, January 2019 Sensor Sweep 4 CommentsRPG (Modiphius): Horrors of the Hyborian Age is the definitive guide to the monstrous creatures inhabiting the dark tombs, ruined cities, forgotten grottos, dense jungles, and sinister forests of Conan’s world. This collection of beasts, monsters, undead, weird races, and mutants are ready to pit their savagery against the swords and bravery of the heroes […]
Sensor Sweep: Sudden Rescue, Solo, Stasis, H. Warner Munn
Monday , 28, May 2018 Sensor Sweep 9 CommentsBooks (Shadowridge Press): Available again for the first time in 45 years, Shadowridge Press is proud to present Manly Wade Wellman’s WORSE THINGS WAITING, one of the cornerstone short story collections in the fantasy and horror genres. Originally published by the legendary imprint Carcosa, Worse Things Waiting gathers 28 stories and two poems, selected from […]
Fairy Stories and Beyond Baum’s Wizard of Oz
Saturday , 1, April 2017 Authors, Before the Big Three, Fiction 21 Comments“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty, I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” – C.S. […]
Spengler is chiefly known for his political columns, but back in 2003, he wrote an unusually perceptive article in the Asia Times about the close relationship between Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings and Wagner and the Ring Cycle. Tolkien well may have written his epic as an “anti-Ring” to repair the damage that […]