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

Ilus Found (The Four Horsemen #3) – Michael Chatfield

Plunged into the heart of Vedra, the Abyssal Plane of Etera, The Four Horsemen connect with Limos once more.

Having reestablished their connection with the cunning Limos, their quest is singular—Desari has found Ilus, her long-lost home, now ensnared in the Fire Region. But revelation comes with its own perils; Ilus is embroiled in a war it is losing, threatening to extinguish its legacy forever.

Conquest leads the charge, with Famine, War, and Death in her relentless wake. Together, they ride not just for survival, but for the salvation of Ilus. Four of them against three nations—will they be the saviors of Ilus, or will its ashes be their final resting place?

Embark on a journey where the line between hero and conqueror is as thin as a sword’s edge or the side you stand on.

The Lost Legion (Galaxy’s Edge: Order of the Centurion #7) – Jason Anspach, Blaine Pardoe, and Nick Cole

Even the dead long for home…

They are the Lost Legions. Famed warriors in the annals of military history, made famous when they struck out for the stars to fight a Savage invasion… never to return or be heard from again.

Until new evidence is uncovered that a Lost Legion sleeps in the pocked craters of a distant mining world.

Sergeant Carson Metzger, a replacement pilot for a Republic HARD HK-PP mech unit, is sent to act as security for the science team seeking to confirm the discovery of the fabled missing legion.

But when the local miners object to the arrival of Republic forces, tensions simmer to an all-out boil. Caught in a hostile revolt and stranded from the rest of their unit, Metzger and his fellow mech jockeys must survive against overwhelming odds…

… or suffer the same fate as the Lost Legion that came before.

On the Milky Way Rivers (A Prayer for Earthrise #6) – Daniel Arenson

The final battle is here. The final showdown between man and monster.

Years ago, the aliens hit us hard. Tentacled aliens. Bloodthirsty aliens. They burned our cities. Devoured our children. Conquered our world.

It ends now.

We lost in space. We lost on land. We lost our world. But a few rebels still fight. A few brave souls still stand tall.

Einav Ben-Ari. Marco Emery. Addy Linden. Names that will echo through the generations. Heroes of Earth. Rebels. They lead a last, desperate assault.

This is our final stand. We must liberate our world.

Or Earth will be lost forever.

Shadow Wired: Doomsday – Gustavo Bondoni

Akane is gone!

She disappeared in the middle of the night without even leaving a note, and Sked is back in the game.

When he tracks her from the depths of the Pacific Ocean, through Kyrgyzstan to India, Sked finds that she is working for his old enemy, the terrorist criminal group Technihilism.

Even though he knows Technihilism wants him dead—and he should stay as far away from them as possible—Sked accepts a job working for Indian nationalists to stop the terrorists from knocking out India’s anti-missile shield, which would leave the country open to nuclear attack.

As Sked races against time, picking up unexpected allies along the way, he comes to realize that he might have to choose between saving Akane or rescuing billions.

But then again, there are no good choices on Doomsday.

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

Artifact (Starship Jericho #1) – Toby Neighbors

There’s something out there. We’ve known about it for a long time. No one knows where it came from or who sent it. But one thing is certain: it wants us to find it.

The S.D.F. Jericho is a new ship, built from a new design, with a single purpose — to retrieve the artifact. She’s still in the early stages of shakedown cruise when the call comes in. The artifact is at the far end of the solar system beyond Saturn’s orbit. Only one ship has ever been built to travel that far, and once they pass Jupiter, they will be completely on their own.

Like every Fleet vessel, the Jericho has a platoon of Space Marines. They are all combat veterans, special forces, and Black Ops commandos. The Senior NCO, Master Sergeant Steel, is fresh from winning the Medal of Honor, but nothing in their training or experience has prepared them for what’s to come.

Flamespitter (Elemental Gunslinger #1) – Jonathan Smidt

A gunslinger with four affinities is a myth.

It’s the kind of story whispered in frontier saloons one drink before closing and around campfires in the dead of night. For the heroes and villains in those tales, that impossible power is a boon, a gift.

For Mr. Jones, it’s a curse.

Of course, that’s not his real name. He’s had many.

Changing names is necessary when you possess a power that every lawman and outlaw would kill to obtain. To survive, you keep your head down, kill when you must, and never stay in one place too long. It’s a life governed by rules and hard lessons, drilled into him from a young age after his parents were murdered because of his ‘gift.’

Since then, the trail of bodies has only grown longer.

But all that is about to change. After years of chasing two-bit bounties, honing his skills, and growing his core, he’s finally caught the scent of the man he’s been searching for—the first of four bodies that will end this carnage once and for all.

Now, it’s time to put his cursed powers to use.

It’s time for revenge.

Forsworn (The Forsworn Oath #1) – David Estes

Do not fear the shadows, but what lives inside them.

When Ludo Vica was only eight years old, he lost his twin brother and his eye when a horrific fire turned his village to ash. The last thing he remembers is a dark figure, wreathed in flames, stalking toward his childhood home. His brother, Gado, was still inside. Then came the explosion, the burning pain where his eye should’ve been, followed by blessed oblivion.

The man deemed responsible for it all was Cainan, a dark sorcerer known as the Fire Eater, who was brought to justice and imprisoned in the legendary fortress known as Comman Dur. In the two decades that have passed since that fateful night, Ludo’s every waking moment has been focused on the only thing he has left to live for: revenge. So when the Fire Eater escapes, Ludo is determined to hunt him down and avenge his brother’s death, a path that leads him into the shadows and mysteries of Lostwood.

What awaits him in the shadows will change everything.

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The New Releases feature will return next week. In the mean time, let’s take a look back.

Pulp fiction is full of Big Threes, from the top magazines every author wanted to write for, to the top three science fiction writers, the top three science fiction magazines, and the top three Weird Tales writers. But there were three magazines deemed so culturally important that these were the only pulps to go straight from the presses into the archives of the Library of Congress. And while Argosy was the father of the pulps, these three magazines represented the best of the genre pulps, from which countless subgenres of literature, film, and comics originated:

Black Mask

Weird Tales

Amazing Stories.

In April 1920, journalist H. L. Mencken created Black Mask as one of many money ventures to support his literary journal. While starting as a general fiction magazine, after Mencken cashed out, Black Mask grew more sensationalistic, bloodier, and more obsessed with crime. And then, in 1923, Black Mask picked a fight with the Klu Klux Klan in a special edition devoted to detectives fighting against the Klan. Foremost among these was Race Williams, the first breakout hard-boiled detective, in “Knights of the Open Palm”. Written by Carrol John Daily, Race Williams was

“…what you might call a middleman – just a halfway house between the cops and the crooks. I do a little honest shooting once in a while – just in the way of business, but I never bumped off a guy who didn’t need it…”

A couple months later, Dashiell Hammet followed up with “Arson Plus”, the first case of the Continental Op. Soon after, under the editorial eye of Philip C. Cody and legendary editor Joseph Shaw, the magazine’s stable would include Raymond Chandler (creator of Philip Marlowe), Erle Stanley Gardner (creator of Perry Mason), Frederick Nebel, Paul Cain (writer of The Fast One), Theodore Tinsley (co-writer for The Shadow), and more. In the process, these writers helped create the masculine and stripped-down writing style mistakenly called the Hemingway style, moved detective stories from the clean puzzles of the Golden Age to something more two-fisted, and inspired the film noir genre, which would employ many of these writers to adapt screenplays of their own works. Weird menace, hero pulps, and comics trace their lineage to these stories as well.

But those wanting something a little bit…unique…would turn to another magazine. Read More

There’s a rare lull in the breakneck world of independent science fiction, so while the New Release feature is catching its breath for a couple weeks, let’s look back at the pulps.

What is pulp fiction?

That is a loaded question, as pulp fiction encompasses many different genres. Science fiction, hard-boiled detective stories, heroic crime fighters that would inspire today’s superheroes, sword and sorcery, and the awful menace of the weird lurking around every corner. And those are just the genres created in pulp’s golden age. Pulp fiction also featured detective cozies, romance tales, westerns, historical adventures, war stories, horror, and more all served up by the dozen for a dime or a quarter per customer. Because of this stunning variety in genre and style, many critics shrug their shoulders and say that pulp fiction is fiction that was published on pulp paper.

In other words, a medium, not a genre.

The name comes from the paper these stories were written on. Cheap, rough, low quality. Pulpy. Completely different from, and some atop their ivory towers would say inferior to, the slick quality of the magazines used for proper literature and proper stories. Such elitist still drips from pulp’s critics today. But when H. L Mencken needed money to support his high-brow literary magazine, he turned to the pulps and founded Black Mask. Mencken’s literary journal was saved, and Black Mask went on to found literary genres, writing styles, and even film noir.

Pulp publishers could be fly-by-night as they chased success. The average pulp imprint lasted little over a year. Some, no longer than an issue. This volatility forced pulp writers into writing self-contained short stories. And if a character was popular enough to warrant a return, the following stories were episodic. Gone were the serials, as unless a writer was fortunate enough to write for stable and successful magazines like Argosy, there was no guarantee a magazine would survive to the serial’s conclusion.

But 1940s wartime shortages moved many pulp magazines away from pulp paper and into the digest format. The paper might have changed, but the stories did not. So something essential to these stories continued to survive in this new medium. And, indeed, continues to do so, as German science fiction serials, American men’s adventure, African photonovels, and Japanese light novels all contain elements of their pulp fiction forebears. Even today, many look back to the golden age of pulp fiction for inspiration in storytelling, style, and milieu. Call it neopulp, dieselpunk, Pulp Revival, or Pulp Revolution, if you wish. The spirit of pulp fiction still lives on. Read More