Blog Archives
sSome of the histories of fantasy fiction will mention that fantasy in general and sword and sorcery in particular disappeared during the 1940s. While this is technically true if given a strict interpretation, it is a mischaracterization. Sword and sorcery was disguised as adventure science fiction. There were writers including Leigh Brackett, Gardner Fox, and […]
F. van Wyck Mason was well known for sailing ship, American Revolution, and American Civil War historical novels. Before he was a best selling novelist, he wrote for the pulp magazines. His Captain North, a sort of proto-James Bond series appeared in Short Stories before the hardback novels. He wrote adventure stories as F. V. […]
Review: The Ghost Box by Mike Duran
Tuesday , 21, April 2015 Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized 3 CommentsLast week, Scooter revisited the origin novel of Harry Dresden, Jim Butcher’s Storm Front. That series is 15 books in and counting. I thought it would be a good time to review another urban fantasy; one that is just getting started. The first book in the Reagan Moon series, The Ghost Box came out a […]
Something I have noticed – hardcore readers of sword and sorcery fiction generally also read blood and thunder historical fiction. Sometimes the boundaries of the two genres are very blurry. Vikings appear to be popular right now with the History Channel’s very historically muddled Vikings show. Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chonicles take place during the Viking […]
While doing some searching at the Internet Speculative Fiction Data Base on anthologies, I noticed one called Warrior Fantastic. Turns out I have it but forgot about it. I forgot about it because I read one story at the time and the book got shoved behind others on one of my bookshelves. Martin H. Greenberg […]
The other night I saw Lt. Col. Ralph Peters on one of the cable evening opinion shows talking about one thousand members of ISIS stopping cold 30,000 Iraqi Army, Shiite militia, and Iranian Revolutionary Guards at Tikrit. I have been reading Ralph Peters for 22 years when I bought the paperback edition of War in […]
I have mentioned in past book reviews that I have read three stories by Joe Abercrombie. None of which made me stand up and take notice. Abercrombie is one of the fairly new writers of fantasy fiction to emerge in the past decade. I had been hearing varying opinions for the past six or so […]
For St. Patrick’s Day, I decided to really read Fr. Andrew M. Greeley’s The Magic Cup. I tracked down a used copy of the paperback about ten years ago, based on a friend’s comment on the book. I read the beginning, lost interest as I scanned through it and put it away. I pulled the […]
An interesting anthology of sword and sorcery fiction is The Barbarian Swordsmen. This was a U.K. paperback from 1981 published by Star Books edited by Peter Haining under the pseudonym “Sean Richards.” Why the pseudonym? L. Sprague de Camp was the first to put together an anthology of sword and sorcery fiction with Swords and […]
The Sword & Sorcery Anthology
Sunday , 8, February 2015 Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized 7 CommentsA couple of years back, if you searched for Tachyon Publications’ The Secret History of Fantasy on Google Books, this is what would come up: “Tired of the same old fantasy? Here are nineteen much-needed antidotes to cliched tales of swords and sorcery. Fantasy is back, and it’s better than ever!” The lure of […]
If you go to Tachyon Publications website, this blurb is at the web page for The Secret History of Fantasy: Fantasy is more than just sword-and-sorcery novels of epic adventures. Here are innovative tales where mythology, fairy tales, and archetypes are re-imagined into a new style of storytelling. This header is present at the Tachyon […]
The Word Made Flesh: On the Nature Of Book-To-Film Adaptations (Introduction)
Friday , 23, January 2015 Fiction 15 CommentsI intend herein and in the next few posts to ponder the personality of adaptations; specifically, of the paper-to-celluloid variety. Though certainly less controversial than politics, or religion, or which is the hottest Victoria’s Secret model, it is nonetheless a hotly contested country, and one that requires a certain degree of passion for admittance. As it happens, […]