Blog Archives
sI have read another seven stories in the Dark Forces anthology. By coincidence, two are Christmas stories. Joyce Carol Oates, “The Bingo Master,: A 39 year old spinster decides she is going to lose her virginity. She struck out at some downtown bars. She ends up at a bingo hall and decides to go slumming […]
Dark Forces (Viking Press, 1980) is viewed as one of the greatest horror short fiction anthologies. Editor Kirby McCauley was able to bring together new and some of the still living Weird Tales writers for a very large book. I have read a few stories reprinted elsewhere back in the 1980s. I can remember seeing […]
Last week, I looked at the The Manhunt Companion which I had picked up last year at Pulpfest. I picked up The Best of Manhunt at Mike Chomko’s table at Pulpfest this year the first day. The Best of Manhunt (Stark House, 2019) is in trade paperback format, 384 pages, edited by Jeff Vorzimmer. Introduction […]
One of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone T.V. Show is “The Howling Man.” It is episode number 5 from season 2 (1960). It is based on a story by Charles Beaumont. The story originally appeared in the magazine, Rogue, November 1959 issue. Rogue was one of William Hamling’s magazines published from the mid-1950s […]
Tales From the Magician’s Skull #6 is from 2021. A total of 80 pages, cover by Doug Kovacs featuring Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Six stories, editor introduction, and three articles present. John C. Hocking has been present in most of the issues with Benhus, the King’s Blade. Benhus has some magic wands inherited from […]
J. T. T. Ryder’s Hag of the Hills is a new novel from 2022. It is the first part of the Bronze Sword Duology. The novel is set on the island of Skye around 200 B.C. Brennus is the youngest son of a famed warrior. His oldest brother Bodvoc is a metal smith, the middle […]
Monster Hunter Bloodlines by Larry Correia is the ninth novel in this popular series. Baen Books published the hardback last year, the paperback just came out a couple months ago. The novel starts out with the crew from Monster Hunter International watching a deal for a Newton Ward Stone so they can get their hands […]
An interesting subset of historical novels are those written by historians. Peter Green (b. 1924) is known for books on the Classical Age. I have his Alexander to Actium and The Greco-Persian Wars on my shelves. Green has written three historical novels. I have been meaning to track down and read The Sword of Pleasure […]
Military science fiction is a sub-genre that should be undergoing some changes due to introduced technology and weapon systems. World Breakers is an anthology Baen Books published in trade paperback in August 2021 and mass market paperback a couple months ago. Subtitled “Super-Tanks to the Stars!,” this is an anthology of new military science fiction […]
Gladys Gordon Trenery (1885-1938) as “G. G. Pendarves” had 19 stories in Weird Tales, seven stories in Oriental Stories/Magic Carpet Magazine, nine stories in Hutchinson’s Mystery Story Magazine, three stories in Hutchinson’s Adventure-Story Magazine, and one story in Argosy from 1923 to 1939. She lived in the Liverpool region of England with roots from Cornwall. […]
Valancourt Books has published fifteen in it’s Paperbacks from Hell series starting in 2019. I covered T. Chris Martindale’s Nightblood in the series. Lisa Tuttle’s A Nest of Nightmares is another entry in that series. A Nest of Nightmares is a collection of short fiction originally published by Sphere Books in the U.K. in 1986. An introduction to this […]
I am always up for a good alternate history novel. I think it was Harry Turtledove’s Agent of Byzantium that really got me into the genre. John Maddox Roberts had a great alternative history with the unfinished Hannibal’s Children series where Hannibal defeated the Roman and exiled them to the north. We have a new […]