Monthly Archives:
sShort Reviews, Love Among the Robots, by Emmett McDowell
Friday , 26, January 2018 Uncategorized 7 CommentsLove Among the Robots, by Emmett McDowell appeared in the Winter 1946 issue of Planet Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. I can’t help but feel that Love Among the Robots is a send-up of Asimov’s (and Asimovian) robot stories. Asimovian Robot stories tend to revolve around solving some procedural engineering mystery as […]
Thanks again to all the backers of Will Caligan’s Comic! The campaign just passed the $35k mark, which means that both graphic novels will be colored. A really good colorist has come forward to work on this, which means they are going to look exceptional. Now, here is the interesting question. Since Swan Knight’s Son appeared to be […]
Quick Reviews: IMPERATOR and A MURDER OF MANATEES
Thursday , 25, January 2018 Book Review 2 CommentsThe premise of the first standalone in Jason Anspach and Nick Cole’s Galaxy’s Edge series is simple: what if Darth Vader went to Dagobah instead of Luke Skywalker? But reducing IMPERATOR down to that single question does a disservice to the first glimpse beneath the hood of the Emperor, Goth Sullus. Here they lay bare his […]
SUPERVERSIVE: “Frozen” is a Mean-Spirited Anti-Disney Movie
Wednesday , 24, January 2018 Superversive 19 CommentsReading Justinian Wright’s recent post on “Frozen” got me thinking about something I’ve heard a lot of people talk about, and perhaps realize implicitly, but never actually state outright: “Frozen” is not a Disney movie. “Frozen” is not a fairy tale. “Frozen” is the exact opposite. It is an anti-Disney movie and an anti-fairy tale. […]
Thanks to an outpouring of backer support, Arkhaven will commission and publish a second graphic novel from Will Caligan, to be published in black-and-white with a full-color cover. We’ve added three new rewards and one new stretch goal at the Will Caligan campaign. If you’ve already backed, you can now add on an additional paperback, hardcover, or […]
New Release Spotlight: A MURDER OF MANATEES
Tuesday , 23, January 2018 Just Released Leave a commentLarry Correia’s interdimensional insurance agent Tom Stranger returns to Audible. When half your galaxy is unexpectedly sucked into a black hole – when a hitherto-unknown species of space aliens lays waste to your home planet – when disaster rears its ugly head (or heads) – who can you call for faster-than-light appraisals and best-in-the-multiverse customer […]
This past weekend, the Geek Gab podcast hosted Benjamin Cheah, known to Castalia House readers as Kai Wai Cheah, to talk about the short fiction revolution heating up on Steemit, a new blogging platform that offers considerable advantages to writers. In this podcast and in his thoughts afterward, Cheah describes these advantages: Steemit offers three […]
Arkhaven Special Freestartr Campaign for Will Caligan
Monday , 22, January 2018 Comics, News, Promotions Leave a commentThis is a special one-week campaign designed to provide work for Will Caligan, a military veteran, a Christian, and a comic artist who lost his publishing arrangement due to his willingness to stand up for his beliefs about right and wrong. (For more details about Will’s story, please read the article written by Megan Fox at PJ Media.) […]
HAPPY ELEVENTY SECOND BIRTHDAY TO ROBERT E. HOWARD!
Monday , 22, January 2018 Appendix N, Authors, Pulp Revolution 3 CommentsIt’s January 22, which makes this HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROBERT E. HOWARD DAY! Happy Eleventy Second birthday, Mr. Pulp Grandmaster. Howard was, it must be said, one of the greatest and most influential F&SF writers of all time, right up there with Edgar Rice Burroughs and A. Merritt. He wrote dozens of poems and hundreds of […]
Sensor Sweep: A. Merritt, Dungeons & Dragons, Monster Manuals, and the Murder of Sword and Sorcery
Monday , 22, January 2018 Sensor Sweep 10 CommentsWriters (On an Underwood No. 5): :Robert E. Howard’s Conan the Cimmerian wandered into the pages of Weird Tales with “The Phoenix on the Sword” (Dec 1932), and was followed by “The Scarlet Citadel” (Jan 1933), “The Tower of the Elephant” (Mar), “Black Colossus” (Jun), “The Slithering Shadow” (Sep), “The Pool of the Black One” (Oct), “Rogues […]
Ben Espen of With Both Hands beat me to the punch with an in-depth review of Galactic Outlaws. My review of this runaway fright train of action and adventure published right here on the Castalia House Blog tried to convince you, dear reader, to give this series a shot by taking the shallow, non-spoiler, route. […]
One could make the argument that Fredric Brown (1906-1972) is the most important crime writer of the late 1940s/early 1950s. He certainly seems important enough to warrant two separate reprint series, one in the 1980s and one now. Something I can’t think of any other crime writer from the period. You probably know Fredric Brown […]