BARBARIAN EMPEROR: A Look Within
Thursday , 25, October 2018 Just Released, Pulp Revolution Leave a comment
The Castalia House blog is pleased to present an excerpt from Barbarian Emperor, the newest release from independent writer Jon Mollison
Plucked from obscurity and hurled into the burning, blood soaked sands of the coliseum, one man defies an Emperor. Rather than settle for mere vengeance and an honorable death, a gladiator rises to challenge both a Derelict Emperor and the dangerous, seething chaos from beyond its borders. Caught between the fiery passion of his master’s step-daughter and the powerful concubine of his greatest enemy, can one simple barbarian chart a course to save an Empire, save the girl, and save his own soul from the black pits of despair?
Full of the furious action and adventurous exploration of strange realms, “Barbarian Emperor” touches on deep themes of familial bonds, the brotherhood of battle, and the eternal balancing act that man and nation perform on the precipice between barbarous struggle and civilizational apathy. Take it for the thrill ride or ponder the still depths of the work, either way, you’ll love this story of one defiant man and his struggle to find himself, his destiny, and his one true love.
My chest heaved with the effort of the fight. Rain dripped down from my bangs, forcing me to shake my head to clear my vision. My assailant mistook the gesture and bade me advance with a ‘come hither’ motion of his shield and spear.
I answered with a salute of my own – sword held vertical before my eyes, hilt at the center of my chest – and he nodded.
Left foot forward, I waded in.
The point of his spear swayed before me, inscribing small circles of caution. He held it low in an underhanded grip which allowed him to lunge and stab forward faster than my own sword could be plunged through the neutral ground between us. Nonetheless, I made my attempt.
My left sword swept around and caught his spear in a weak backhanded blow that knocked the thick blade of it aside. Stepping inside the length of the spear, my sword crashed down upon his shield and left a deep valley across the curve of it and then the man spun away and the spear came around and caught me on the back of the head.
Stars whirled before me, white against the black and I fought to retain my feet. The press of the spear tip loomed large in my mind and I threw a backhanded blow with my left sword to ward off the death blow. Needlessly as it happened.
The spearman had backed off, allowed me a chance to recover.
His bare head cocked to one side, a silent inquiry of my readiness. The man wore breeches like my own, but his had been dyed in a riotous plaid pattern. His loose white shirt hung open at the chest, revealing a broad expanse of muscle covered by intricate blue tattoos. Pale blonde hair lay plastered to his skull, heavy curtains flanking a steely face pierced by bright blue eyes. His mouth quirked with amused respect.
I like a man that smiles when he fights.
We might have been friends under better circumstances.
I grinned tightly and saluted him back, and we began to circle each other again.
We danced, feinted, and parted. Again and again we lunged and dodged and tested each other’s mettle. Our blades clanged in light blows as each thrust gently, probing for weakness and finding none.
Oh, he was a cagey one, that warrior.
My swords grew heavy and my breath ragged. His shield he carried close in, only rarely extending it for protection or punching with its edge when I veered to close, but his spear tip began to sway in larger circles. His own chest heaved with the effort of pulling enough air in toward starving muscles.
The short, sharp shock of battle had subsided into a marathon test of mettle. So evenly matched were we in skill that the balance hung solely on the grit and determination to continue. Willpower alone kept us upon our feet. We ground away at each other, muscles tensed and snapping back and forth in stroke and counterstroke. Solely by dint of merciless tenacity, we each hung onto that last fragment of our minds that compelled us to steady, analyze, and react despite the ache of our long fight.
The first to make even the slightest error would be the first to die, and well we both knew it.
The crowd, ignorant of the game of Bellum Parvus we played with muscle and blood, booed at what they took to be lackluster sparring. But we proud warriors recognized that death waited for us and would arrive at any moment.
Interstellar con man Rex Nihilo and his long-suffering robot sidekick Sasha are back, and they’re neck-deep in their most outrageous scam yet: selling black market planets!Terraforming uninhabitable planets and selling them to criminals right under the nose of the repressive interstellar Malarchy is good work if you can get it, but there’s a price: as the pair’s profits soar, they find themselves on the run from… well, pretty much everybody. With the Malarchy breathing down their necks, the malevolent cult known as the Sp’ossels hot on their heels, and the Ursa Minor Mafia out for their cut, Rex and Sasha hop from planet to planet, with nothing but their wits and a motley crew of loyal friends to keep them alive.
But when their antics draw the attention of an ancient intelligence determined to wipe humanity from the galaxy, they put their moneymaking plans on hold–and team up with their biggest rival–to save the galaxy once again.
Wargame Wednesday: Wargaming 19th Century Africa
Wednesday , 24, October 2018 Book Review, Computer Games, Games, War, Wargames 4 Comments
Battle of Adwa. With St. George on the Ethiopian side the Italians didn’t have a chance.
While reading about the armies Wars of Imperial Conquest in Africa 1830-1914 by Bruce Vandervort I had a thought that a feature of miniature war gaming is the diversity of readily available figures. A case can be made that the economics behind computer game development drive game topics to well known/popular historical periods (along with a “Euro-game” tendency) while the miniature market can support small production runs covering historical periods only supported by a niche market.
I will explore the available games and miniatures available for some of African armies covered in Wars of Imperial Conquest and attempt to find game coverage of the lesser known campaigns. This means the Zulus are out and, for example, concentrate on the Sokto Caliphate. Before I begin I’d wager that miniatures are available of their fight against the British Expeditionary Force in 1873-1873 but bonus points to any manufacturer or game designer that covers the birth of the caliphate when the Fulani tribe rebelled against the Hausa state of Gobrir. If that game or miniatures exist, I’ll buy them in time to review in this post.
My primary method of research will be via the DuckDuckGo search engine and the quest is to find the extent war gaming for 19th Century Africa, not to prove the superiority of miniature gaming over board or computer games. Next page, we’ll find out what is available and there is a short review of Vandervort’s book.
John Buchan’s “Huntingtower”, A Novel Fit for Cthulhu
Wednesday , 24, October 2018 Uncategorized 4 Comments
Reading modern day Lovecraft pastiches to prep for your Call of Cthulhu game? What a moke.
Reading Lovecraft’s own works to prep for your Call of Cthulhu game? That’s baroque.
Reading John Buchan’s works to prep for your Call of Cthulhu game? Now that, my friends, is a brilliant stroke.
Yeah, I’m still singing the praises of John Buchan. After a number of misfires on the independent author front – I’m loathe to write poor reviews for people already swimming upstream against the mainstream publishing houses– I’ve gone back to the reliable palette cleanser of post-WWI British adventures, and what an adventure Buchan delivers in Huntingtower. Published in 1922, it’s the first of three books featuring recently retired grocery store mogul Dickson McCunn. At age fifty-five, the man takes an early retirement and with his wife gone to the hydropathic spa for a week, determines to set out for a walking tour of the countryside environs around Glasgow.
The story starts slow, with all the careful deliberations of McCunn himself, Buchan settles in for a sedate introduction to the story’s chief protagonist and his early efforts at the bucolic, Shire-like adventure of a walk in the countryside. The pace is actually quite deceptive, as all of the colorful figures and personalities he encounters come roaring back into the story when he arrives at the village which lies at the foot of the titular tower. There, he finds himself embroiled in the daring rescue of a princess held captive in Huntingtower by Bolshevik agents. Told with typical British restraint, the rescue involves a host of characters which include a young poet who manages an adroit heel-face turn early on, a band of brave young ragamuffins, an aging housewife wise beyond her years and station, and near the end a quartet of maimed ex-soldiers with more effective armaments than effective arms and legs.
Plucked from obscurity and hurled into the burning, blood soaked sands of the coliseum, one man defies an Emperor. Rather than settle for mere vengeance and an honorable death, a gladiator rises to challenge both a Derelict Emperor and the dangerous, seething chaos from beyond its borders. Caught between the fiery passion of his master’s step-daughter and the powerful concubine of his greatest enemy, can one simple barbarian chart a course to save an Empire, save the girl, and save his own soul from the black pits of despair?
Full of the furious action and adventurous exploration of strange realms, Barbarian Emperor touches on deep themes of familial bonds, the brotherhood of battle, and the eternal balancing act that man and nation perform on the precipice between barbarous struggle and civilizational apathy. Take it for the thrill ride or ponder the still depths of the work, either way, you’ll love this story of one defiant man and his struggle to find himself, his destiny, and his one true love.
I’m assuming you’ve seen at least one episode of Scooby Doo. (If you haven’t, the hell are you doing here?) In every episode, there’s a scene something like this:
Scooby Doo comes out dressed to the nines in a tuxedo. He sashays over to the monster the gang has been running from and dumps a bouquet of flowers in its arms, along with a giant card that says “First Place Winner!” Shaggy, standing behind a vintage 1919 “still uses flash powder” camera, says “Say cheese!” and sticks his head under the cloth. He takes the pic. The flash explodes. The monster is blinded and starts rubbing his eyes. Flowers go everywhere. Scooby and Shaggy run off, ditching their costumes along the way, safely making their escape.
In every episode, the duo somehow embarrass the monster. Which is fine. The monster should be kind of ridiculous: it’s a comic children’s cartoon, not a hardcore horror flick.
Speaking of hardcore horror flicks… (Spoilers follow.)
Sensor Sweep: Schuyler Hernstrom, New West, Zothique, Starship Troopers, S’rulyan Vault
Monday , 22, October 2018 Sensor Sweep 1 CommentFiction (Everyday Should be Tuesday): “You may talk of cities and justice all you wish. Tonight, the pagan wins. My anger will be sated and these 
wicked people brought to ruin.”
Mortu and Kyrus in the White City is a new novella out from Cirsova standout Schuyler Hernstrom, the first in a planned series equally sword and sorcery and far future post-apocalyptic.
Speaking of Cirsova, congrats to Donald Uitvlugt on winning the Cirsova no. 9 giveaway! Check out Donald’s own work.
Publishing (Strategy Business): The media and entertainment industry has a long history of embracing disruptive innovations, from the printing press to the personal computer. But the rapid shift from physical to digital over the past decade or so has been truly revolutionary. In general, physical media has suffered a great deal. Printed newspapers and magazines have migrated to online versions, while DVDs and CDs have been supplanted by film- and music-streaming services.
Fiction (Jon Mollison): Newsletter readers and those who follow me on Twitter already know about my next release. As a quick break from the Heroes Unleashed Universe, I knocked out a nice fantasy epic that features a gladiator clawing his way out of the arena, crossing half an empire and back, and confronting a derelict empire with sword in hand. Along the way he must face the difficult choice between two enchanting women, and he must learn how to become the leader he was always meant to be. Read More
Wordsworth’s Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural series has been an excellent series of bargain trade paperbacks of classic horror fiction. A friend of mine sent me about five or six years ago E. F. Benson’s Night Terrors and Edith Nesbit’s The Power of Darkness. I was never much of a reader of the English ghost story. I have to admit not having read much of M. R. James.
I did not know what to expect with Night Terrors: The Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson. It is a big book with 54 stories and 704 pages. Benson had fame with novels of frivolous society beginning with Dodo in 1893. He has one pre-Tolkien fantasy novel with The Valkyries (1903) which is prose retelling of Wagner’s opera.
Benson wrote supernatural stories from 1893 through 1938. A good portion but not all are ghost stories. He had six stories in Weird Tales, two in Ghost Stories, and five stories reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries. He was a regular in Hutchinson’s Magazine in the U.K.
H. P. Lovecraft mentioned four of Benson’s stories and thought highly of them.
A good portion of Benson’s supernatural stories are collected in Night Terrors but not all. Here are some of my favorites: Read More
The alternative world genre of isekai overflows with the adventures of teens questing through fantasy worlds that blend video game and Western fantasy tropes. While most of these tales escape the server farms and silicon gates of actual MMO games for divinely-crafted fantasy worlds, a few return to the central premise of modern isekai:
What would it be like to live inside a video game?
Most Japanese litRPG anime and light novels are aimed at an early teen audience, following eighth-grade protagonists through simple power fantasies. But what adventures might await the adults who form a majority of the MMO player base?
Log Horizon, the multi-media franchise based on the light novels by Mamare Touno, takes up the challenge, simultaneously delivering a World of Warcraft/EverQuest-inspired game world that, for once, resembles current MMO gameplay while challenging its characters with the social quandaries and responsibilities that twenty-something adults encounter. By eliminating the hoary convention of death in the game world resulting in death in real life, Log Horizon forces the players to deal with each other and the inhabitants of the world. The result is a richer story absent of the false drama caused by player death.
For twenty years, the MMO Elder Tales has been the most popular and ambitious MMO, eclipsing even World of Warcraft in its player base. As Elder Tales’ twelfth expansion, Homesteading the Noosphere, rolls out, a socially awkward engineering graduate student known as Shiroe finds himself trapped inside the game along with hundreds of thousands of players worldwide. As the trapped players struggle to adapt to the new reality inside Elder Tales, a growing malaise, poor food, and decaying relations with the non-player characters known as The People of the Land cloud the game world. Together with his friends Naotsugu and Akatsuki, Shiroe sets out to rekindle hope and create a place that the gamers can call home. The end to this quest will not be found at the bottom of a raid dungeon. Read More
New Release Roundup, 20 October 2018: Science Fiction
Saturday , 20, October 2018 Just Released Leave a commentStilted cities, space pirates, cyberpunk delivery mages, and a warrior son of the God-Emperor of Mankind feature in this week’s roundup of science fiction’s newest releases.
Accord of Honor (The Ragnarok Saga #1) – by Kevin McLaughlin
Space Pirates aren’t supposed to exist. But apparently, nobody told them that. When Thomas’s first command is ambushed in space, only quick thinking will keep his crew alive.
One random pirate ship would be bad enough, But the truth is far more deadly. Multiple ships of unknown origin are striking freighters and kidnapping their crews.
Then the pirates turn their eyes toward the planets.
One man has prepared for this; Thomas’s estranged father, Admiral Nicholas Stein. Hero and villain of the last great war, he has spent decades preparing for the conflict he always knew was coming. Now he and Thomas are all that stands between humanity and a ruthless enemy who will stop at nothing to control space – and from there, to enslave us all.
The Atlantropa Articles – Cody Franklin
In an alternate timeline, World War II never takes place. Instead, a plan is put into effect by Hitler and the Nazi party to drain the Mediterranean Sea. They promise fertile land, millions of jobs and endless energy. New land to be settled. Living space for a crowded continent. All of Europe came together and signed a treaty to realize this new world, it was called ‘The Atlantropa Articles’
Two millennia later, the Reich run the world. Aryans have become a race of their own, out numbering their neighbors and ruling with a messianic passion towards Hitler. Europe has been united under the banner of the swastika.
But the plan of a fertile lush land was never realized. The project took decades longer than anticipated. By the time it is completed, what they find is a salty barren world. Now the Mediterranean Sea is a desert basin known only as the Kiln. Southern Europe has been abandoned.
This is where Ansel’s story begins.
Battlespace (The Stars Aflame #1) – Richard Tongue
For decades, the Terrestrial Commonwealth has been at peace. The bulk of the Navy that once conquered the stars in mothballs, only a handful of obsolete cruisers patrolling the far frontiers of space. When a genocidal alien race decides that humanity is its next target for extermination, only a single ship can stand against them, a battered old cruiser named Leonidas, and her maverick commander, Mike Scott, brought out of enforced retirement to lead his ship and his crew one last time. As the worlds of mankind burn under the wrath of the enemy, Captain Scott must fight one desperate battle after another to buy time for the Commonwealth to must its battlefleet, or face the destruction of Earth, and all humanity with it…
Black Triumph (The Dark Victory #3) – Brendan DuBois
More than ten years ago, the alien Creepers arrived in Earth’s orbit and started a war that was a slaughter for humanity. Nuclear weapons detonated in the atmosphere destroyed all electronic devices, asteroids dropped into oceans and lakes swamped cities with artificial tsunamis, and the nearly invulnerable Creepers arrived on Earth, going forth from their dome bases to attack civilians and military units at will.
Sixteen-year-old Randy Knox, a newly minted lieutenant in the U.S. Army, has been fighting the Creepers since he was twelve. He has seen friends, family members and fellow soldiers killed by the Creepers, and he is tired of war. At one point, it seemed the war was over when the aliens’ orbital battle station had been destroyed.
But a second Creeper orbital battle station has arrived.
The war no longer seems to be over, and while returning to his home unit, Randy’s convoy is ambushed. Separated from his fellow soldiers and his K-9 companion Thor, Randy faces the ultimate horror of every American serviceman: to become a prisoner of war of the aliens.
Short Reviews – [Just a Tease] The Dark World, by Henry Kuttner
Friday , 19, October 2018 Uncategorized 5 CommentsThe Dark World, by Henry Kuttner was originally published in the Summer 1946 issue of Startling Stories. Right now, I’m reading the reprint in Winter 1954 issue of Fantastic Story Magazine, which can be found here on Archive.org.
I’m not going to be able to do a full review of this story this week, as I’m buried in Cirsova submissions and of course the first story I’d pick up would be “a complete novel”, but I don’t want to deprive you of this gem and leave you hanging on Friday.
I’m only a few chapters in, but Kuttner’s got this dark, Byronic gothic vibe down. It’s been ages since I read Norton’s Witch World, but the setup has some striking similarities.
Kuttner’s hero is a wracked and soul-cursed WW2 vet who’s never been the same since his plane crashed over Sumatra. The witchdoctors did what they could, but if those heathens were the sort, they’d all be crossing themselves at the sight of him.
Witchfires, shades, nightmares and werewolf apparitions haunt him even back in the good old US of A. Then, she appears…
Castalia House is pleased to announce that Dr. C.R. Hallpike’s SHIP OF FOOLS is now available in print.
Dr. Hallpike spent his first ten years as an anthropologist living with mountain tribes in Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea and writing up his research for publication. He learned that primitive societies are very different from our modern industrialised societies and that it takes a considerable amount of study to understand how they work. But since all Man’s ancestors used to live in a similar manner, understanding these societies is essential to understanding the human race itself, especially when speculating about our prehistoric ancestors in East Africa.
Unfortunately a wide variety of journalists and science writers, historians, linguists, biologists, and especially evolutionary psychologists erroneously believe they are qualified to write about primitive societies without knowing much about them. The result is that many of their superficial speculations have about as much scientific credibility as The Flintstones.
The various critical studies contained in Ship of Fools: An Anthology of Learned Nonsense about Primitive Society examine some of the most popular of these speculations and evaluate their scientific merit. Among the learned fools whose works are critiqued are:
- Yuval Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
- Emma Byrne’s Swearing is Good For You
- René Girard’s theory of learned behavior
- William Arens’s The Man-Eating Myth
- Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar