Blog Archives
sWhen Fantasy & Science Fiction LOST ITS DAMN MIND
Wednesday , 8, March 2017 Appendix N, Pulp Revolution 12 CommentsSuppose, at one point in time, Hollywood suddenly decided that the only fiction movies worth making were fictional documentaries—documentaries about events that never occurred. A little license was granted in what fictional events could be at the core, but after that ONLY STRICT REALISM. In specific, Action Movies were ABSOLUTELY VERBOTEN. And this decision was […]
I came across this through Kevyn Winkless’s Pulp Revolution community on Google Plus: a panel discussion from 1968 on H. P. Lovecraft and the pulps with Jack Williamson, E. Hoffman Price, Emil Petaja, Edmond Hamilton, Fritz Leiber, and Robert Bloch. There’s some really good stuff here! First hand accounts of what H. P. Lovecraft and […]
Sometimes you go to get your truck back, and end up shaking the pillars of Heaven. Hey, it happens, even if you didn’t mean it to. It happened to me.
WRIGHT ON Lost Works – The Worm Ouroboros
Tuesday , 28, February 2017 Appendix N, Before the Big Three 33 CommentsThe Worm Ouroboros Back in the day, ere ever Appendix N was penned by Gary Gygax, the lover of works of fantastic fiction was starved. Paper shortages in World War Two had killed off magazines catering to weird tales of oriental splendor, monsters and wizards and deeds of derring-do, and older books venturing into the […]
Bro, Do You Even Read: The Movie
Friday , 24, February 2017 Appendix N, Before the Big Three, Pulp Revolution 64 CommentsThere’s bit of a push right now for some of us to moderate our tone. The fear is that we’re going drive away potential readers… at the very time when this blog is having it’s best month ever in terms of traffic. The concern is that we might lose our rep for being builders… at […]
The Big Three… Catastrophic Errors
Friday , 24, February 2017 Appendix N, Before the Big Three, Pulp Revolution 41 CommentsCampbellian Science Fiction stories—alternately “men with screwdrivers” or Blue SF—are provably inferior to the Fantasy & Science Fiction stories of the Pulps. Campbell is the Silver Age, the Pulps the Golden Age. This is not because the writers and editors of the Silver Age sucked. They had talent, skill, and imagination in abundance. Unfortunately, what […]
Q: What is the most important thing in storytelling? A: The storytelling. Period. Any other answer is sheerest nonsense.
Used to I’d know if I was on the right track because I’d start getting a lot of flak. Not anymore! The low grade hostility and the suppression fire of snide remarks, sneering, and pedantic nitpicking just don’t cut it anymore. When it was just a collection of blog posts, the other side could still dismiss what […]
Come children, let me tell you a tale… There was once an age, a Golden Age, an age of wonder and delight, of adventure and heroics, of creativity and imagination unbound… an age undreamt of by modern man, an age forgotten and buried, like hidden treasures beneath the sands of Ægypt. And into this Golden […]
Bradford Walker of Walker’s Retreat is banging the drum for today’s much ballyhooed episode of Geek Gab: Daddy Warpig, Dorrinal, and Brian Niemeier deserve all this hype for making this happen- especially adding John C. Wright after this initially being only Razorfist and Jeffro talking Appendix N and related matters. If you’re not already subscribed […]
You’ve seen the lists. You’ve heard the way they talk. It would go right past you if you didn’t know what to look for, but really… outside of our circles here it’s as if science fiction just mysteriously leaps from H. G. Wells and Jules Verne directly to Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert […]
Gardner Dozois on Fantasy’s Extinction Event
Wednesday , 1, March 2017 Jeffro Appendix N, Comment 43 CommentsA full appreciation of just what Campbellian style “Hard SF” really is all about is only possible with an understanding of when it happened and what cultural forces drove it into its temorary and artificial dominance. For that, the most concise summary you’re liable to find is in the preface to Gardner Dozois’s Modern Classics of Fantasy: […]