Conan (Essential Malady): Whatever the truth is, Conan the Adventurer was certainly one of my earliest introductions to Robert E. Howard’s most popular character. The show originally broadcast in late 1992 and had a longer second and final season in late 1993 but I don’t believe I watched it until a year or two after the original run.

Cinema (With Both Hands): Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two movie adaption of the second half of Frank Herbert’s Dune is very good. Verging on greatness. Villeneuve successfully captured key thematic elements of Dune in a way that is likely to resonate with audiences now.

Conan (Sprague de Camp Fan): Conan the Swordsman was the first book in the Bantam Conan series. It was originally published in August 1978 and has been reprinted several times by Bantam, Ace, and Tor Books. It featured an introduction, 7 short stories, and a scholarly article. The first story was “Legions of the Dead” by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp.

Star Wars (Fandom Pulse): The rollercoaster ride of Patty Jenkins’ involvement with the “Star Wars” universe continues as she hints at a potential revival of the long-stalled project Rogue Squadron. This announcement comes after a whirlwind of speculation and uncertainty surrounding the film’s fate, leaving fans wondering about the direction of the beloved franchise under Kathleen Kennedy’s leadership. Read More

One of my favorite Louis L’Amour quotes is:

“The idea that poverty is a cause of crime is a lot of nonsense. It is one of those cliches that is accepted because it seems logical. Crimes are committed by people who have some money and want more. More often they are committed by somebody who wants to have money to flash around, to buy fancy clothes, or spend on women, drugs, or whiskey.”

That is from the Bantam paperback The Hills of Homicide. Last summer, I wrote about the collected crime stories of Louis L’Amour Part 1. I read Volume 6 (Part 2) this winter. This collection contains the more traditional private eye stories from the pulp magazines in the late 1940s. Read More

Every week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy.


Cirsova #18 / Spring 2024 – edited by P. Alexander

Eighteen stories of heroic adventure and daring suspense. Including:

“A Quick Laugh with Death” by William Drell – Investigating the medical blackmail of a xenofruit magnate leads Mickey Vance to the sweltering planet Verdus, where the locals are beautiful and criminals deadly!

“On the Eve of Xerkhet-Buul” by Howie K. Bentley – Thargg Tanuth seeks to avenge the death of his beloved Princess Lenoris! Betrayed on the eve of Xerkhet-Buul, Thargg finds that he too is to be hunted by her killer!

“The Superior Griefs (Part 1)” by Michael Tierney – Investigation into government disposal of abused children leads to the discovery of a primeval race of lizardmen stockpiling them for food in stasis chambers! What is their connection to the strange new threat that has emerged on the edge of space!?

…and more!


Die By the Sword Volume II – edited by D. M. Ritzlin

The clash of steel, the mysteries of magic, the adventures of a lifetime!

Die By the Sword Vol. II promises more daring fantasy and high-stakes adventure than ever before. From DMR Books and the finest fantasists of our time come TWELVE sensational tales, ready to swallow you whole into a world of sword-wielding heroes, exotic locales, strange creatures, and malefic magic spells!

Connwen flees into the Haunted Lands where he makes his stand against the Saxon invaders who killed his tribe and razed his village… Summoned by the Elders of Qwaarzm, Impyrryan Purple is sent to secure the necropolis at Xul-Kizaak. Little does he know that the threat is far more ominous than that of common grave robbers stealing mummies to sell to the circles of decadent nobility… A knight with no name and no memories of his distant past is sent on a mission to rescue a young woman accused of witchcraft from the Drudenhaus at Bamberg… Ulxedomus, Crown Prince of K’Zal, wanders a weird world with an alien entity trapped in his left eye socket, in search of the usurper to the throne of his kingdom—his own brother… A curse is placed upon the house of Conal MacCarthy in retribution for a terrible deed from the past. Will the MacCarthy family survive the onslaught of the supernatural swordsman set on them by sorcery?

Return to the ways of steel and sorcery once more, and DIE BY THE SWORD!


The Invisible Colony (The Forever World #2) – Ethan Rhodes

For Zane Lucas, the adventure is far from over.

With the Gral sent home, abandoning their posts around the colonies, Humans are once again in charge of their own fate.

Zane and Julia are determined to find the mysterious 44th colony. They devise a plan and set into action, while Lorna and Henry search the Forever World for evidence of the elusive alien race.

Carl is sent into enemy territory with only a shred of hope as his guiding light.

For both father and son, choice is synchronous with consequence, but how can you be sure you’ve made the right one?


No Retreat (The Last Hunter #13) – J. N. Chaney and Terry Mixon

When things are going to plan, check to see what you’re missing.

Admiral Jack Romanoff and his crew are trapped inside the Confederation proper and facing an unknown number of alien attack ships. They’d thought the Tardan military was defeated, but they’d been wrong. Now they were trapped in a fight they couldn’t lose.

When everything seems exactly as you’d hoped, figure out what you’ve missed.

Not only do they need to stop the Locusts, but they still have to defeat the Poseidon Group and overturn the coup they’d staged. They only have two battleships and a spy ship to make that happen. Their only advantage is that no one knows they’re there. They’ll have one chance to get things right, or humanity is screwed.

When everything goes to hell and your back is against the wall, fight. Read More

This is a guest post by Richard:

A SCENT OF NEW-MOWN HAY was the first of twenty-eight enviro-thrillers/science-factions/quasi-horror novels – call them what you will – that the prolific English author John Blackburn produced between 1958 and 1985. If those descriptions seem uncertain or ambiguous then it is because Blackburn’s work is notoriously difficult to categorise. He specialised in literary hybrids. What in today’s parlance would be termed genre mash-ups. Stories that commenced in one fictional field would frequently absorb elements from others. The result, as often as not, was a mutation that bore little correlation with any of its propagators.

If even classifying Blackburn’s work is difficult, then reviewing it presents additional problems. His novels often depend upon a startling, singular, and usually morbidly fascinating, idea which it would utterly ruin the prospective reader’s enjoyment to reveal. A SCENT OF NEW-MOWN HAY defies both easy definition and spoiler free analysis. Read More

Sword & Sorcery (Echoes of Crom Records): I list my top ten classic sword-and-sorcery collections by author.

Knives (Blade HQ): Put simply, gas station knives cheap out on materials. Where there should be metal, there is often plastic. Where there should a blade steel with a real name and a known composition, there is mystery-meat “Titanium-Coated Stainless” ominously labeled “China.” Their gem inlays feel as cheap as they look.

Comic Books (Dark Worlds Quarterly): The 1980s offered some new wrinkles to old dragons. One of these was the new paper quality of independent comics. Artwork could be colored with more detailed processes. Epic Illustrated was a magazine made for such artwork. Not surprising, several dragons appear there. We also have some 1970s comics that continued into the 1980s, and finally got around to dragons.

Review (Sprague de Camp Fan): I believe, Neither Beg Nor Yield, (Rogue Blades Entertainment, 2024) is the first Kickstarter funded Sword & Sorcery anthology. If not the first, it is certainly the most ambitious. When L. Sprague de Camp had his idea for the first Sword & Sorcery anthology, Swords & Sorcery, he had to query at least three different publishers before getting a contract. Nowadays S&S fandom (and technology) has grown to the point where tools like Kickstarter can garner funding for publishers and writers. Read More

Cold Print is not an Arkham House book but two thirds of the contents were originally published by Arkham House. Ramsey Campbell was another of August Derleth’s discoveries. Cold Print is a collection of Campbell’s “Cthulhu Mythos” stories from 1962 to 1985. Cold Print was first a Scream Press hardback from 1985. Tor reprinted it as a mass market paperback in late 1987. I remember seeing the Tor paperback at the local Dairy Mart spinner rack. I did not pick it up at the time debating whether to buy it or not. I didn’t. I did pick up a nice condition paperback at the local library booksale last year.

Contents: Read More

Horror (RT Book Reviews): It’s always hard to believe that such prolific and influential writers died in relative obscurity during their time. The works of authors like Poe, Hemingway, and the focus of this list, HP Lovecraft all put out numerous works during their time on earth just to die penniless and unknown, with their stories only being read by niche fiction readers.

Fantasy (Paperback Warrior): Elric of Melnibone can lead anyone down their own rabbit hole researching the novel, series, and grand mythos associated with the character. Elric first appeared in Michael Moorcock’s novella “The Dreaming City”, published in Science Fantasy in June, 1961. More Elric stories and novellas were published through the early to mid-1960s in Science Fantasy

Hugos (The Federalist): For the second time in 10 years, insiders of the World Science Fiction Convention (colloquially known as “Worldcon”) have bent their own rules in an attempt to police the bounds of what books and writers are to be seen as acceptable science fiction and fantasy. This time, they’ve done so on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party. Read More

The Arkham House streak continues with August Derleth as “Stephen Grendon’s” Mr. George and Other Odd Persons. For some reason August Derleth had eleven stories in the mid and late 1940s under the Grendon name. A look at the Jaffery & Cook Weird Tales index shows it was not a case of both a Derleth and “Grendon” story appearing in the same issue of Weird Tales. There are no stories as “Derleth” in Weird Tales in 1947.  Derleth had used the name Stephen Grendon as a character in one of his mainstream novels. Maybe it was a case of adopting a persona to write different stories.

Mr. George and Other Odd Persons was first an Arkham House hardback published in 1963 as by Stephen Grendon. There was a Belmont paperback from 1964 a year later as by August Derleth. The collection had ten of the Weird Tales stories plus some stories from other publications and anthologies. Two of the stories, “The Extra Passenger” and “Mr. George” were both adapted for the T. V. show Thriller in 1961. This might have been the reason for first the Arkham collection and the subsequent paperback. Read More

Every week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy.


The Conduit’s Key (Essence Wielder #4) – Dan Michaelson and D. K. Holmberg

As Dax explores his new connection to essence, a new threat emerges.

Dax is challenged by his new connection to essence. Not only does it change his focus in his classes, but he has to find a new fighting style in the arena.

Unfortunately his essence use draws attention from those with a dangerous power.

Dax and his friends need to master the connections he’s formed before this power changes him—or is changed by the others. If he fails, a deadly danger may destroy the empire from within. But how can he succeed when everything he’s learned in the Academy about essence fails him?


Forward Command (Galaxy Bridge #1) – Daniel Gibbs and Steve Rzasa

An all-new galaxy. A terrifying new enemy.

Exploration of Sextans B is underway via the first stable trans-galactic wormhole in recorded history. Colonel Mateo Larra takes command of Joint Base Sagittarius Arch, the visionary new space station housing diplomats, merchants, and military personnel eager to make their mark.

But with every opportunity comes opposition.

Pirates harass travelers throughout the newly charted system. Smugglers, hauling valuable contraband, slip under the CDF’s nose. Even the League of Sol continues spy games as if the war never ended. Colonel Larra barely steps aboard the Arch before facing the most daunting challenges of his storied career.

Ships vanish without a trace. The mysteries deepen when one reappears like a ghost, pristine as the day she left the shipyard—without her crew. But when the League ambassador is kidnapped, his bodyguards murdered in cold blood, Colonel Larra encounters an unimaginable horror on their doorstep.

And this time, it’s a fight the Coalition can’t win.


The Last Storm: The Shadows – Sam Sisavath

When the storm of the century hits Houston, it’s perfect timing for a heist.

Hurricane Matthew is a force to be reckoned with. It has been forecasted to drown the city of Houston in an unrelenting torrent of rain. In the days before its arrival, the city was evacuated, leaving behind only a skeleton police force and civilians unable to flee its destructive path.

It’s the perfect time and the perfect place for the perfect crime.

Richter has it all figured out. A professional with years of experience, he leads a group of similar professionals that have seen and done it all. The plan goes down without a hitch, just as Richter envisioned. It’s everything else that goes off the rails.

Forced to seek refuge in an abandoned apartment building to wait out the storm, Richter crosses paths with a police officer and her partner. They think they’re each other’s worst enemies, but they’re wrong. Very wrong. There is a creature of endless hunger waiting in the shadows, and it’s ready to feed.

Good guys? Bad guys? None of it matters tonight.


Retaliation (The Sol Saga #2) – James Fox

The fight for freedom comes at a heavy price.

After learning too late that he was supposed to take the fall for a political assassination and massacre, disgraced ex-general Keith Brennan finds himself given a slim chance at redemption.

The puppet-masters are being flushed from the shadows. Revolutionaries clash against the full might of the UNIC Protectorate across the planet.

If Edward McAaron has his way, the battles won’t stop with just Mars. War has come to the system at a level never before seen in human history. Lines have been drawn in the red sands. Whose side are you on?

Retaliation is the second book in The Sol Saga trilogy, a dark and gritty sci-fi drama with relentless action and subterfuge that will leave you breathless and hungry for more!


Rise of a Tank (Getting Hard #1) – G. D. Temple

None will stand in the way of his quest to become an invincible tank.

Herald Stone always made a tank in every RPG he played. To be unkillable by anyone, be they players or monsters—that was his first Goal, a simple boy’s dream. However, the turbulent realities of life put an end to his gaming days.

Years passed, and Herald Stone, now a successful businessman, his gaming days almost forgotten, was presented with the opportunity to redeem himself… to fulfill his first Goal. Childish? Trivial? Others might think so.

But Herald Stone always fulfilled his Goals—every single one.

Immortality beckoned in the world of Mother Core, and this time Herald Stone would answer. Choosing a long-forgotten race, hidden away in an unknown region, his journey begins.


A Thousand Li: the Fourth Stage – Tao Wong

Change is the only constant

Returning to the Verdant Green Waters sect over a decade after his exile, Wu Ying finds his position and place within the Sect in flux. Strong enough to be an Elder but not having achieved his rank via the normal methods, he has jealous and worried rivals to contend with. It is reminiscent of his own past, but now, he’s an Elder and able to enact transformation in a broader sense.

Wu Ying must find his own place in the sect or leave it once and for all. The cultivation wounds he received in the south trouble him, and it will require time and resources – resources the Sect is able to provide – for him to stabilize his footing before he continues his climb to ascension. As with all things, immortality is never easy to grasp.

Weird Tales (Tellers of Weird Tales): So it looks like Weird Tales is back to its old habits of not providing good service to its readers and customers. This has been going on for years. A couple of people have left comments on this blog telling about their own lack of experience in receiving what they have paid for. I’m sure there are and will be more.

Appendix N (Goodman Games): Derleth was a prolific author in his own right, expanding the scope of the Cthulhu mythos (a term Derleth himself coined), as well as hundreds of pieces of fiction that rank among the greatest pieces of horror fiction ever penned. Anyone who can read The Lonesome Places and then take a walk after dark without looking over their shoulder every few moments has better nerves than this author possesses.

Fantasy (Sprague de Camp Fan): What is Zothique? Let the Sorcerer himself (in the first paragraph of his “The Dark Eidolon”) describe it for you: “On Zothique, the last continent on Earth, the sun no longer shone with the whiteness of its prime, but was dim and tarnished as if with a vapor of blood. New stars without number had declared themselves in the heavens, and the shadows of the infinite had fallen closer. And out of the shadows, the older gods had returned to man: the gods forgotten since Hyperborea, since Mu and Poseidonis, bearing other names but the same attributes. Read More

H. Russell Wakefield (1888-1964) is considered one of the top tier of English ghost story writers. The Clock Strikes Twelve was his sixth story collection. The Arkham House edition from 1946 is an expanded edition of the 1940 U.K. version.

Contents:

Why I Write Ghost Stories

Into Outer Darkness

The Alley

Jay Walkers

Ingredient X

“I Recognized the Voice”

Farewell Performance

Not Quite Cricket

In Collaboration

A Stitch in Time

Lucky’s Grove

Red Feathers

Happy Ending?

The First Sheaf

Masrur

A Fishing Story

Used Car

Death of a Poacher

Knock! Knock! Who’s There? Read More

Every week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy.


The Anvil’s Mark (The Queen’s Blade #3) – D. K. Holmberg

A deadly power upends everything a Blade knows. The Queen’s Blade saga continues.

Zaren, steadily forging alliances in the bustling Busal City, finds solace in his growing network, a stark contrast to the oversight of his mentor. This newfound stability, however, is short-lived.

The unearthing of a mysterious and arcane ritual on the city’s fringes catapults Zaren into action, exposing gaps in his preparedness.

A series of sinister events, marked by an escalating number of casualties, propels Zaren into a quest for clarity. In his search, he leans on his allies for insights, but unexpectedly, it’s his enemies who shed light on the true magnitude of what’s at stake. The conspiracy he’s long feared stretches deeper than he has known.

And the Queen’s Blade may be all that stands before a deadly power that threatens to consume the city.


Eagle’s Flight (The Chronicles of Adalmearc #1) – D. E. Olesen

The King is dead. His heir too young to rule. Who will claim the crown?

The noble houses gather to choose a new Lord Protector, sparking old rivalries. If they can’t agree, civil war looms. That is if foreign kingdoms don’t smell blood in the water and invade first.

Lord Vale wants to take up the mantle, spurred by his ambitious brother Konstans.

Lord Isarn likewise seeks this power. He is aided – or thwarted – by the return of his brother, the knight and war hero Athelstan, whose squire, Brand, hopes to restore his family’s fortunes no matter the cost.

Through all of this, an enigmatic traveler makes plans with jarls, scribes, and priests for his own mysterious purpose.

Only one thing is for certain: War is inevitable.


Fallacy (Starship Lost #5) – Craig Martelle

The preliminaries are out of the way. The real fight begins.

The Malibor are putting up staunch resistance, fighting as if their lives depend on it.

Which they do and they don’t. The Borwyn aren’t using a scorched earth approach. They’re not destroying everything in their path. They’re willing to live in peace with the Malibor.

Which is something the Malibor have no interest in. Victory or death! They will defeat the Borwyn, or they will die trying.

There is no glory for anything other than the one who is still standing after the battle is over.

Read the latest installment of this military space adventure.

The battle is joined.


Mythica: Revenant – Dean Henegar

A warrior reborn. An enemy fueled by death. A fight for humanity.

Mercenary captain Sabine Giroux knew that death was a constant companion in her line of work, and when it finally happened, she wasn’t surprised.

What surprised her was that she didn’t stay dead.

Brought back as an undead revenant by the god Gnessos, Sabine is tasked with stopping a foe that seeks to siphon the power of death and destroy everything she holds dear in the process.

With a lifetime of combat experience to draw upon, Sabine must gain Gnessos’ favor to grow more powerful and fulfill her role as his champion. But with every rank of favor that Sabine gains, more of her humanity is lost as her undead nature threatens to take over… Read More