Blog Archives
sDandelion Summer by Lodestone Nostalgia can be the slippery slope, especially when occupied with witches, time machines, happiness machines, mass murderers, the confidence that a new pair of sneakers can inspire. Or it can be miraculous enough to have a section of the moon named after it. Ray Bradbury grew up in rural Illinois, a […]
I mentioned last month when looking at the Gardner Fox biography that most writers do not live very interesting lives. The exception being Barry Sadler, author of the Casca books. I just found out there is biography on Sadler that I now want to read. One way to side step the biography and make things […]
This is a guest blog post from Richard who has contributed a few items over the years. I looked at L. Sprague de Camp’s “The Stronger Spell” a few weeks back. Richard has recently read or re-read the stories in the series and has an opinion: L. Sprague de Camp’s discovery of heroic fantasy through […]
Tryst in Time: Cosmic Romance
Sunday , 29, September 2019 Authors, Before the Big Three, Fiction, Short Fiction 1 CommentThe concept of imaging past lives, reincarnation, wandering egos has been an idea going back over a century in fiction. H. Rider Haggard had the idea of past loves in She (1886). He returned with variations of the idea in The […]
Today is the 110th birthday of August Derleth (1909-1971). Derleth is probably best known for his macabre fiction. If my adding is correct, Derleth had 124 stories in Weird Tales magazine. He is surpassed by only Seabury Quinn who had 143 stories in Weird Tales. His weird/macabre fiction has often been dismissed. Yet, when I […]
There is a new Robert E. Howard biography available. David C. Smith, a writer of fantasy, horror, and an English book told me about this project two years ago. Robert E. Howard: A Literary Biography is from the new imprint, Pulp Hero Press. L. Sprague de Camp dominated Robert E. Howard biography for decades. He […]
Today is the 127th birthday of J. R. R. Tolkien. Tolkien had a profound effect on my life. I had read The Hobbit in sixth grade but went back to reading about animals of the world. It was Sr. Angelica’s English class in eleventh grade where she had us read The Fellowship of the Ring. […]
Three years ago, I wrote a piece about the Joseph Payne Brennan paperback collection The Shapes of Midnight. Joseph Payne Brennan, like Carl Jacobi and Donald Wandrei, is a writer I like to revisit from time to time. The Feaster From Afar is another of those Midnight House hardbacks that I got back in 2009. […]
4D Warfare: A Doctrine for a New Generation of Politics is a revolutionary guide to applying the basic principles of military intelligence to social media, written by a proven master of the information space. In 4D Warfare, author Jack Posobiec explains how the social media narrative is established and how it is influenced over time […]
Having read all the Fleming Bond stories with the exception of the posthumously completed The Man with the Golden Gun, I figured it would be interesting to look at them through the lens of pulp. While usually characterized as spy fiction, it’s clear they were heavily influenced by pulp stories, as well as American (rather than […]
Subject Knowledge is Important in Science Fiction, Too!
Saturday , 3, March 2018 Appendix N, Authors, Fiction, Uncategorized 25 CommentsOne of the appeals of writing science fiction is that it doesn’t have to be tethered to anything in our current world. Presumably then, one doesn’t have to do any research or have any prior knowledge in coming up with a fictional society, planet, or universe. Forget having to spend months of research to write […]
Atmospheric Horror: Harder than It Seems!
Saturday , 24, February 2018 Appendix N, Authors, Fiction 7 CommentsIt’s extraordinarily difficult to write an effective work of horror or suspense, especially one that will be appreciated for generations to come. Most of the audience has seen dozens of slasher films featuring killings and dismemberment in gruesome detail. One can hardly shock them with that. Moreover, write a work with fantastical elements and a […]