Blog Archives
sI read the last third of stories in Dark Forces. Karl Edward Wagner, “Where the Summer Ends”: I read this one back in summer 1983 in the collection In a Lonely Place. Wagner was a rising star in the late 1970s. He was viewed as the new hope in sword & sorcery. He also wrote […]
Philipp Meyer’s The Son is a novel covering four generations in Texas from the 1830s to modern times. I had heard about the AMC T.V. series and my interest was piqued with the setting in the Texas oil boom. I have some interest in the Texas oil boom towns of the 1920s as it had […]
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 […]
I enjoy reference books on classic fiction magazines. Whether indices or annotated guides, I love pouring over details and trends. I have annotated guides on Starling Stories and Fantastic Adventures. I have indexes on Weird Tales and Black Mask. My newest addition is The Manhunt Companion by Peter Engantino and Jeff Vorzimmer from Stark House. […]
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 […]
Queer Blades/Rick Hollon, editor (Farther Trees Press, 2021): Harry Harrison wrote a fake quote attributed to Dr. Frederic Wertham in Great Balls of Fire (1977): “Conan is a crypto-homosexual and the entire school of sword-and-sorcery reflects this fact.” Harrison was probably paraphrasing from Jan Strnad’s “The Psychological Conan” from Amra V2, #57 (June 1972). Strnad […]
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 […]
Firebolt is the fifth and last in the Sgt. Hawk series by Patrick Clay. This book was written in the early 1980s but never published due to the collapse of Belmont-Tower Books. There was confusion as to whether the book was published at the time or not. There was an ISBN for it but no […]
Here is a guest post by Richard: ELFWIN by S. Fowler Wright: A Review By Richard Toogood The Anglo-Saxons have made something of a belated push for public recognition over recent years. Hitherto marginalised in favour of the doomed glamour of the Romano-Britons whom they supplanted, and the more tongue friendly named Normans that came […]
I like to read books on paleontology. I used to read Peter Ward’s books a couple decades back. Bakker’s The Dinosaur Heresies and Adrian Desmond’s The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs are on my shelves. One recent book that is garnering attention is Thomas Halliday’s Otherlands. The book was released on February 1, 2022 from Random House. I […]
Good sword & sorcery fiction has a strong horror element. It becomes Lin Carter when it doesn’t. What is more natural than putting the sword with Halloween, that spookiest of Celtic holidays? DMR Books has a forthcoming anthology of new fiction, Samhain Sorceries. The book contains 10 stories in 210 pages. Keith Taylor is the […]
I first heard of Patrick Clay’s “Sgt. Hawk” book series from the Paperback Warrior blog last year. The series is about a tough United States Marine the Pacific portion of WW2. What intrigued me was Patrick Clay was “fascinated with the epic style of author Robert E. Howard.” Belmont-Tower Books under the Leisure imprint published […]