Blog Archives
sThe Mammoth Book of Warriors and Wizardry
Sunday , 18, January 2015 Black Gate, Book Review, Fiction, Uncategorized 16 CommentsThis is a new anthology in the Mammoth series published by Running Press in the U.S. and Robinson in the U.K. Trade paperback in format, 515 pages, $14.95 price and Sean Wallace is the editor. Twenty-five stories, most on my guess around 10,000 words length on average with a couple that get into novelette territory. […]
I am far from the first person to note that role-playing games, especially fantasy RPGs, do not bear a strong resemblance to the literary sources most often referred to, Epic Fantasy. While fantasy games may be filled with dwarves, orcs, elves, and goblins during play the characters do not act as if they were on […]
When I received my copy of Swords & Dark Magic, I had to laugh at the cover. It struck me as so clichéd with the dainty swordswoman in armor sort of like the Roman lorica segmentata hoisting a very large medieval sword. One can’t have a fantasy painting these days without a female warrior (warrioress?) […]
Sometimes your opinions get challenged. This happened recently when I received the new first issue of Worlds of the Unknown from the revived Spectre Press. This small press magazine contains the second “Elak of Atlantis” story written by Adrian Cole. Henry Kuttner wrote the original four Elak stories for Weird Tales that were published from […]
The Mid-1980s Paperback Sword and Sorcery Extinction Event
Sunday , 28, December 2014 Fiction, Uncategorized 14 CommentsIn the early 1980s, if you were new to the sword and sorcery genre, you could go to your local chain bookstore, generally B. Dalton or Walden Books and get the core library in short order. Robert E. Howard’s Conan, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Michael Moorcock’s Elric were all there. There was […]
Asteroid Mine He was Leia. His robot’s twin was captained by an incompetent but friendly woman with an unfortunate name: Charity Stump. Stump’s inability to read the basic geographical details of a lightwave scan made him – Bruce Newborn – nervous. After all, if someone like her had qualified to take his counterpart position, how […]
A Ghost Story for Halloween: Pronouncing the Mackay-Bennett
Friday , 31, October 2014 Fiction, Uncategorized 2 CommentsWell, it is midnight somewhere in the world tonight, so happy Hallows Eve to you. Please enjoy a chilling little tale – on the House. (NOTE: If you want to jump through a few hoops to download the file for your reader instead of reading it here, do so at Smashwords and enter the […]
H. Beam Piper’s snappy little novel Murder in the Gunroom was his last venture into the traditional detective story, before he started writing science fiction full time. The book – a forefather of modern gun porn – tells the story of a prominent businessman and gun collector found dead by his own hand in a […]
“The Deported” by Vox Day Stupefying Stories, October 2011 Now available in THE ALTAR OF HATE. It was the fourth day of our summer holiday in Vernazza, a little fishing village in the Cinque Terre. We had spent the morning on a charming hike through the hills, lunched in Monterosso al Mare, then enjoyed […]
Then it was my turn to be frightened, because I realized for the first time that it was possible for a human being to do what I had done. And if I could do it to Elen, I thought, surely they could do it to me. But they couldn’t. They set me free: they had […]