Notice: Undefined offset: 1 in /home/linweb28/c/castaliahouse.com/user/htdocs/wp-content/plugins/page-theme/pageTheme.php on line 31
July – 2019 – castaliahouse.com

Monthly Archives:

s

Cinema (1000 Misspent Hours): Albert Pyun is another one of my great cinematic nemeses; if you watch anywhere near as many low-budget movies as I do, he’s probably one of yours, too. Pyun’s big claim to fame is his nearly sure-fire touch with what ought to be a categorically impossible subgenre, the action-less action movie. […]

There has been round of blog posts in the wake of an interview I had at Jared Trueheart’s Legends of Men blog. That interview spurred a response by Jason Ray Carney who disputes that sword and sorcery is man’s fiction. Daniel Davis joined in at his Brain Leakage blog. Jason Ray responded to that. Go […]

Alien abductions, miscalculated jumps to hyperspace, and the forge of the Terran Armor Corps feature in this week’s science fiction new releases. Beast Mode (A Cauldron of Stars #3) – Felix R. Savage A new breed of immortal villains threatens the Cluster… …and only one man can stop them. Racing against spooks and space pirates, […]

Science is a collection of stories we like to tell each other about how the world works. This one is a detective story- a murder mystery- with some unwitting miscreants, their multiple victims, and quiet heroes. The tale has been told before, with us-es, the human races, as the offender. We, the usual suspects, are […]

James Warren kicked off the Warren Publishing empire in 1957 with a pair of monster magazines edited by Forrest J. Ackerman, the man widely considered, for better or worse, to have kicked off the culture of sci-fi fandom.  Vampirella has proven to be the longest-lasting and perhaps most famous creation of the company, although it […]

Fantasy Fiction (Forbes): The fantasy genre has exploded in recent years with the popularity of hit series like Harry Potter and A Song Of Ice And Fire. Fantasy first hit its stride in popular culture with old, pulp sword-and-sorcery stories like Conan the Barbarian and sword-and-planet fare like The Princess Of Mars. Later, J.R.R. Tolkien sparked the modern era of fantasy fiction […]

The sword and sorcery genre has not been well served on film. Some movies get close at times but all too often you get low budget, bad script, bad acting fare to end up on Mystery Science Theater 3000. One movie that is a guilty pleasure for some is The Sword and the Sorcerer from […]

Dungeon core factories, ghost machines, and vampire councils feature in this week’s fantasy new releases. The Depth of Deceit (Elder Stones #5) – D. K. Holmberg With the threat of another attack, Haern must use his new abilities to make a dangerous gambit. Doing so requires he trust someone who has betrayed him once before, […]

It’s not often you come across a novel for which the descriptive tags “gonzo” and “hard sci-fi” equally apply.  Travis J. I. Corcoran’s Powers of the Earth somehow manages the feat in his tale of a rebel moon’s bid for independence.  The results are a hot, glorious mess that never stops throwing new wrenches into the machinery […]

Lit-Crit/Culture Wars (Brain Leakage): They always featured their alpha male heroes in exotic locations, getting into fist fights, knife fights, and gun fights. The women were always fast and dangerous. The bad guys were always powerful and ruthless. The covers usually depicted some hard case with a gun, striking a tough guy pose with a […]

One of the stalwarts of the men’s adventure paperback genre from the 1960s through the early 1990s was Lou Cameron. Cameron (1924-2010) started out as an artist. For whatever reason, he turned to writing cranking out dozens of paperbacks in genres including westerns, crime/detective, and war. He won the Western Writers of America Spur Award […]

Spend enough time reading science fiction, and readers will come across the idea of the Big Three of classic science fiction. Always a controversial selection, as the list of worthy grandmasters of the genre exceeds the places available in any Big Three, the current consensus is that Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein […]