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January – 2017 – castaliahouse.com

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The most popular fantasy hero today is not Tarzan or John Carter. It’s not Superman or Batman. It’s not even Conan or Elric. No, the most popular fantasy hero of today is probably some video game character like Mario. That’s just how it is, really. And he may not be the most popular one of all right […]

Japanese entertainer Chiyo Aragaki — known to her fans as Dimity Red — is on the road to international success. Her music is in all the trendiest anime, and her fanbase’s enthusiasm fuels her passion to perform. Adept at gymnastics and manipulating ki energy, Dimity uses her skills to entertain the enraptured crowds. However, she […]

It’s like a moth to flame with me. First there was GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling. That one  was my first full-length book for anyone: 35,000 words of fairly detailed subsystem that was my first attempt at taking grappling rules and put them on the same scale and mechanical basis as striking with fists or […]

WRIGHT ON: Lost Works The Real Buck Rogers II Let us visit the lost and neglected works of the golden age of science fiction pulps or the silver age of pre-Tolkien fantasy, and see the futures as once they were.  AIRLORDS OF THE HAN. by Philip Francis Nowlan is the second half of the seminal Buck […]

Here is the narrative: Science Fiction was a tiny genre, largely ignored by the general public, a niche of a niche, only appealing to teenage boys… until Star Wars. Then, it got big. Star Wars blew up so big, they had to coin new terms to describe it: summer blockbuster. It was so big, it […]

The third book in the Dragon Award nominated “Love at First Bite” series. Merlin “Merle” Kraft has been fighting the darkness for months. He left San Francisco in the capable hands of Marco Catalano and his anti-vampire team to defend them against vampires. With special operators at his command, Kraft has been killing every vampire […]

If you missed yesterday’s episode of Geek Gab, trust me… you want to head over to YouTube and give this a listen straightway! Check it out!!!

This is a guest post by my friend Richard Toogood, a lover of sword and sorcery fiction and history. Boudica, the Ultimate Brexiteer: in fact and fiction By Richard Toogood Part One: “Just the facts, ma’am”.      With the United Kingdom on the cusp of beginning the formal process of disentangling itself from a federalising […]

Chris Lansdown has an excellent interview with the mastermind behind Cirsova Magazine, the inestimable Castalia House blog columnist P. Alexander. Within it you will find the most concise explanation of what Pulp Revolution is and what makes it different that pretty much everything else on the market: What we’re doing with Cirsova is not about […]

You’ve seen their lists. They’re all the same, full of works that everyone in the newspapers, magazines, and author panels seem to agree are the most significant. But something is off. It’s like there is a whole swath of awesome books that have been weirdly and arbitrarily excluded from the conversation. Just as one example, […]

Too Smart to Die by George Antonio Wetter appeared in the June 1943 issue of G-Men Detective Magazine. Too Smart to Die is a clever and fun little piece of wartime propaganda with a simple message: if you’re a Nazi 5th column agent, the G-Men will find you. Otto Karlweis (a fictionalized version of Fritz […]

Dungeons and Dragons has always suffered under the lack of a simple system for subduing an opponent as opposed to killing them. Many other role playing games as well if it comes to that. Many times in the course of my 36 years of playing D&D a party exacerbates a physical conflict because the mechanics […]