Blog Archives
sThe 2016 H. P. Lovecraft Re-read: The Colour Out of Space
Sunday , 18, September 2016 Fiction, Short Fiction 9 Comments“The Colour Out of Space” preceded “The Call of Cthulhu” in print by six months. “Colour” appeared in the September 1927 issue of Amazing Stories. S. T. Joshi states that Lovecraft wrote “The Colour Out of Space” in March 1927. Amazing Stories was a relatively new magazine as its first issue was in April 1926. […]
The 2016 H. P. Lovecraft Re-read: The Call of Cthulhu
Sunday , 11, September 2016 Fiction, Short Fiction 4 CommentsHalloween is less than two months away. I generally shift my meager time for pleasure reading towards the weird and some horror as the days get shorter and nights get cooler. Last week I pulled out the big Barnes & Noble H. P. Lovecraft The Complete Fiction to reread some H. P. Lovecraft. My introduction […]
There was a time between the collapse of sword and sorcery publishing in 1985 and before George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones came out. In that time, David Gemmell (1948-2006) almost kept sword and sorcery alive single-handed. We lost David Gemmell ten years ago on July 28, 2006 from complications after heart surgery. […]
There is yet another collection of Robert E. Howard’s “Conan” stories out, this time from Dover Books entitled The Weird Tales of Conan the Barbarian. I found out about the collection from Bill Thom’s indispensable Pulp Coming Attractions site (which links to the Castalia House blog posts on pulp related items). I went to Dover […]
Last week, I put up some links to my hypothetical Best of Weird Tales post. A member of both the Robert E. Howard (REHUPA) and Lovecraft (Esoteric Order of Dagon) amateur press associations mentioned “I have waited 40 years for a Nictzin Dyalhis collection.” Nictzin Dyalhis is one of the enigmatic writers for Weird Tales […]
There have been a number of Weird Tales anthologies but interestingly, no best of Weird Tales. If you were to put together a Best of Weird Tales, what stories would you include? Here is my list: The Call of Cthulhu H. P. Lovecraft Beyond the Black River Robert E. Howard The Tale […]
Robert E. Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon was the greatest novel to appear in Weird Tales. Jack Williamson’s Golden Blood was the second greatest novel to appear in Weird Tales. Jack William had a total of six stories and two serials in Weird Tales from 1932 through 1938. He also had almost as many […]
Building a Weird Tales Library: Part 9- The Single Author Collections
Sunday , 5, June 2016 Fiction, Short Fiction, Uncategorized 7 CommentsIn addition to the multi-author paperback anthologies reprinting Weird Tales fiction, there are some single author collections that can expand your reading experience. E. F. Benson is one of the great English ghost story writers. Benson had seven stories in Weird Tales from 1929 to 1933. You can find them in the Wordsworth Night Terrors […]
The 1990s had a sense of déjà vu when it came to Weird Tales reprints. Sword and sorcery and Cthulhu Mythos anthologies returned. Sword and sorcery underwent near extinction in mass market paperback form in 1985. Karl Edward Wagner had the idea of reprinting early pulp era sword and sorcery in a series of paperback […]
The late 1980s brought a new sort of Weird Tales anthology, the bargain hardback. Peter Haining’s Weird Tales stood as a lone monument for 20 + year period. Marvin Kaye’s anthology in 1988 was part of a new era along with anthologies edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan Dziemianowicz, and Martin H. Greenberg. Robert Weinberg had […]
The Weird Western “sub-genre” is an odd classification, because one of the hallmarks of Western novels, stories, comics and movies is their naturally occurring internal morality, often defined (often obliquely) as a Code – most famously, the “Code of the West.” This code is not rooted in the natural world, but is intrinsically supernatural. For […]
SF Coverage in Transition: SF Signal Shuts Down, io9 Makes Move
Thursday , 12, May 2016 Fiction, Uncategorized 21 CommentsAfter covering nearly the last decade and a half of science fiction publications, movies and events, SF Signal is shuttering its doors. From John DeNardo and JP Frantz, founders of SF Signal: When we started SF Signal in 2003, it was because we loved speculative fiction. Having a blog allowed us to share that love with other […]