Blog Archives

Weird Tales (Tellers of Weird Tales): The first issue of Weird Tales, dated March 1923, probably arrived on newsstands before that, possibly in mid to late February. I base that only on the idea that magazines usually showed up ahead of their cover dates so as to avoid seeming outdated. For example, Time magazine also […]

Fantasy (Grognardia): Since this will likely be the last Pulp Fantasy Gallery post for a while, I thought I’d change things up a bit and go for something a little different this week. Sterling Lanier’s 1973 novel, Hiero’s Journey, is a work of post-apocalyptic science fantasy of which I am very fond. It also enjoys the unique distinction […]

Robert E. Howard (Paperback Warrior): “Robert E. Howard’s Iron Shadows in the Moon”, starring Conan the Cimmerian, was published in Weird Tales in April, 1934. The story was renamed to “Shadows in the Moonlight, and appeared in the Gnome Press volume Conan the Barbarian in 1954. It was later edited by L. Sprague de Camp for inclusion in Swords & Sorcery, a 1963 collection […]

Robert E. Howard (M.C. Tuggle): Ernest Hemingway and Robert E. Howard had a lot in common. Both were passionate outdoorsmen who relished food and drink and brawling. Though identified with different genres, both infused their fiction with athletic, vivid prose that still stirs the imaginations of appreciative readers. They have inspired countless writers, and decades […]

Conan (Paperback Warrior): If you look online for the definition for “convoluted”, it should just provide a link to Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp’s “Hawks over Shem” short story. In my quest to absorb as much Conan literature as humanly possible, I read half of this particular short story and found myself so confused that I re-read the […]

Cinema (We’ve Got Back Issues): By the late 50’s, Tarzan had swung through many adventures in numerous incarnations, but few would guess that Edgar Rice Burroughs’ lion wrasslin’ loin clother wearer would suddenly bust out one of his best appearances seemingly out of nowhere. Gordon Scott was already three Tarzan movies into a career that […]

Cinema (MSN.com): 40 years ago, the unlikely acting career of then-bodybuilding champion Arnold Schwarzenegger went off with a bang in Conan the Barbarian (1982). Based on Robert E. Howard’s character of the same name from 1930s pulp magazines, Arnold’s epic sword and sorcery film was helmed by writer-director John Milius, the militant filmmaker best known for writing […]

Fiction (Endless Bookshelf): In 1923, a century ago, Welsh author Arthur Machen was at the height of his literary reputation on both sides of the Atlantic. It had been a long path from his “horrible” juvenile poem Eleusinia (1881)(1881) and such early books as The Anatomy of Tobacco (1884) and the numerous translations of the 1880s and early 1890s. […]

Firearms (You Tube): Wow, ejecting shell makes bullet go off inside ammo box. RPG (Grognardia): Between 1978 and 1985, TSR Hobbies published eighteen stand-alone adventure modules carrying the byline of Gary Gygax, starting with Steading of the Hill Giant Chief in 1978. Because it was the first of its kind, module G1 does not include a suggested level range […]

Aviation (Aviation Geek Club): The SR-71, unofficially known as the “Blackbird,” is a long-range, advanced, strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed from the Lockheed A-12 and YF-12A aircraft. The first flight of an SR-71 took place on Dec. 22, 1964, and the first SR-71 to enter service was delivered to the 4200th (later 9th) Strategic Reconnaissance Wing […]

D&D (Grognardia): An old mantra of this blog has long been that “roleplaying games were born in the megadungeon.” By this, I simply mean that most of the earliest examples of what we would today recognize as RPGs were played in the context of exploring an immense, subterranean locale filled with monsters, magic, and mysteries […]