Blog Archives
sBallantine Books published Leigh Brackett’s third and last book, The Reavers of Skaith, in August 1976. Twenty months had gone by since the publication of The Hounds of Skaith. Brackett did edit The Best of Planet Stories #1: Strange Adventures on Other Planets that came out in January 1975, only three months after The Hounds […]
Five months after the book publication of The Ginger Star, The Hounds of Skaith was out in October 1974 from Ballantine Books. There was no magazine version this time. The Hounds of Skaith came out at 182 pages, so almost the same length as The Ginger Star. Jim Steranko painted the cover specifically for this […]
Tomorrow, December 7th is the 100th birthday of Leigh Brackett. Leigh Brackett’s science fiction output dwindled with the death of the pulp magazines. She produced three stories per year 1950-54 for the science fiction magazines. She had two stories in 1955, the year most science fiction pulp magazines died and one of those stories was […]
Leigh Brackett created a hard character in Eric John Stark, also known as N’Chaka, the man without a tribe. He is probably the most brutal pulp magazine character since Conan the Cimmerian. Leigh Brackett grew up reading Edgar Rice Burroughs. The book that started it all was The Gods of Mars. She told writer David […]
November 25 is the birthday for Poul Anderson (1926-2001). He is an important author in my life. I probably have more books by Anderson than any other science fiction author (Jack Vance is probably second). Anderson wrote space opera, fantasy, humorous science fiction, mysteries, a little hard science fiction etc. He not only had breadth […]
I have a soft spot for Gardner F. Fox (1911-1986). Fox is probably best remembered today as a comic book writer. He created The Flash, Hawkman, the Justice Society of America. He gave us Batman’s utility belt. Fox also had a pulp career starting with “The Weirds of the Woodcarver” in September 1944 issue of […]
October puts me in the mood for reading horror fiction. I used to read a fair amount of horror back in the 1980s but lost interest in reading the newer authors. The past week I have been re-reading Joseph Payne Brennan (1918-1990). Brennan was the last major author to come out of Weird Tales magazine […]
R. F. Tapsell’s The Year of the Horsetails is the greatest novel you have never read. It ranks probably in my top five favorite novels alongside The Hour of the Dragon, The Broken Sword, and Eagle in the Snow. I first heard of it in a book review by L. Sprague de Camp in an […]
One of my finds at a stop at Mac’s Back Paperbacks on Coventry Road in Cleveland Heights last month was an upgrade of Tanith Lee’s Cyrion. I had read some of the Cyrion stories in various sword and sorcery anthologies about 31 years ago. I have a very beat up used copy of the D.A.W. […]
Swords Against Cthulhu is a brand new trade paperback anthology from Rogue Planet Press, an imprint of Horrified Press. Edited by Gavin Chappell, artwork by Stephen Cooney, 154 pages in length. Cost is $13.87 if you order from lulu.com. The idea of a sword and sorcery anthology with the Cthulhu mythos is long overdue. In […]
People have asked me what fiction I would use for a sword and sorcery anthology. I made it known in an earlier blog post that I found Tachyon Press’ The Sword & Sorcery Anthology wanting in terms of contents. I will tackle first of what I would use for an introductory anthology. Say Scholastic Book […]
Pulp-fest took place last weekend in Columbus, Ohio. One dealer there had some boxes with a nice variety of sword and sorcery paperbacks. I had most of them but still managed to find a few obscure items. I also upgraded my copy of Gordon D. Shirreffs’ Calgaich the Swordsman (Playboy Press, 1980). Calgaich the Swordsman […]