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sSensor Sweep: Lovecraft’s Eyes, D&D Anniversary, 7-11 Marvel Cups
Monday , 29, January 2024 Sensor Sweep 1 CommentPopular Culture (Grognardia): In 1977. 7-Eleven produced a series of Slurpee cups that featured Marvel Comics characters. This was apparently the second such series, the first having come out two years prior, but I don’t recall ever seeing the original run. In ’77, I wasn’t much of a comics reader, but I did like Spider-Man […]
Medieval France was not a nation but rather an ethno-geographic area. The Capetian kings ruled the Isle de France with little power over quasi-independent counties and duchies. Toulouse, Aquitaine, Brittany, Normandy, Anjou, Burgundy all fought and schemed for dominance. This is the milieu of 12th Century France and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur’s adventures of Pierre Faidit […]
Sensor Sweep: A. Merritt, Zorro, Indiana Jones Game, Choose Your Own Adventure
Monday , 22, January 2024 Sensor Sweep 1 CommentComic Books (Dark Worlds Quarterly): The blending of genres continues in 1981, with many stories falling into the Science Fiction category. SF was big in the 1980s and Sword & Sorcery on the wane. We are only one year away from Arnold Schwarzenegger playing Conan. You’d expect an up-surge in interest but in many ways […]
Chandler H. Whipple (1905-1977) was a pulp writer who started in the westerns pulps in 1932, mostly under the name “Robert Enders Allen.” He co-wrote “Boot Hill Payoff” with Robert E. Howard for Western Aces, Oct. 1935. Howard’s agent, Otis Adelbert Kline had arranged to have Howard rewrite a story unsold by Whipple. Whipple wrote […]
Science Fiction and Fantasy New Releases: 20 January 2024
Saturday , 20, January 2024 Uncategorized Leave a commentEvery week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy. Aetheric InFusion (Magical Fusion #3) – Johnathan Brooks Exposed as a “Fusion prodigy” to the Mages of Copperleaf Academy and the Martials of Fort Pinevalley, Larek struggles with the attention and expectations […]
Sensor Sweep: Dark Harvest, Space Western, Godfather, Cordwainer Smith
Monday , 15, January 2024 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentComic Books (CBR): The trade paperback contains all six issues of Space Western Comics that were originally released in 1952 and 1953 and starred Spurs Jackson, an Arizona rancher who is captured (along with some of his ranch hands) by some Martian invaders. Once on Mars, Spurs and his men overthrow the evil Martians and […]
In January 1936, F. Orlin Tremaine, editor at Street & Smith for Clues Detective, Astounding Stories, Cowboy Stories, and Top-Notch presented Donald Wandrei with that month’s issue of competitor Popular Publications’ Dime Detective. There were two stories that were imitations of Wandrei’s “Ivy Frost” stories from Clues Detective. One was a non-series story, “Black Widow’s […]
Science Fiction and Fantasy New Releases: 13 January 2024
Saturday , 13, January 2024 Uncategorized Leave a commentEvery week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy. The Forever World – Ethan Rhodes On a routine border patrol, pilot Zane Lucas encounters a mysterious cluster of drones. When he reports it to the Scorpius head office, they quickly sweep […]
Sensor Sweep: Planetary Romance, Frank Frazetta, D&D Fifty Years
Monday , 8, January 2024 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentRobert E. Howard (Sprague de Camp Fan): There is a scene in the Robert E. Howard biopic, The Whole Wide World, where Novalyne Price discovers REH carries a gun in his car. REH justifies its presence saying that this is dangerous country. ”Outlaws, vagrants, they’re all here.” Star Wars (Fandom Pulse): The Star Wars universe is facing […]
Years ago, I read Ron Goulart’s The Dime Detectives, a history of the detective fiction pulps. I learned some things including the author Merle Constiner. Goulart had this about the “Luther McGavrock” series: “For Black Mask Constiner wrote of Luther McGavrock, a private eye who was headquartered in Memphis and worked on strange and wondrous […]
Science Fiction and Fantasy New Releases: 6 January 2024
Saturday , 6, January 2024 Uncategorized Leave a commentEvery week, the Castalia House Blog spotlights some of the many new releases in independent, pulp, and web novel-influenced science fiction and fantasy. An Outlaw’s Vengeance (The Last Eternal #6) – Jacob Peppers Some shadows are not shadows at all but Death, watching, waiting. Only sometimes, Death is not content to watch. Sometimes, he comes […]
Sensor Sweep: Sonic Adventure, L. Sprague de Camp, John Buscema, Star Wars Holiday Special
Monday , 1, January 2024 Sensor Sweep Leave a commentReading (Free Beacon): My first vague inklings of sexuality came from Robert E. Howard’s Conan books—but, then, my first creeping sense of a malevolent supernatural, like a gateway drug for H.P. Lovecraft, came from those Conan stories, too. Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan of the Apes, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World: a dive into the […]