Blog Archives

Love Among the Robots, by Emmett McDowell appeared in the Winter 1946 issue of Planet Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. I can’t help but feel that Love Among the Robots is a send-up of Asimov’s (and Asimovian) robot stories. Asimovian Robot stories tend to revolve around solving some procedural engineering mystery as […]

Tepondicon by Carl Jacobi appeared in the Winter 1946 issue of Planet Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. A great empire on Ganymede has fallen. Its last emperor has placed a curse on its seven cities, riddling each with a horrible plague. The people of these cities revel and debauch in their wretched […]

The Man the Sun Gods Made, by Gardner F. Fox appeared in the Winter 1946 issue of Planet Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. I don’t really need to go into what a legend Gardner F. Fox is, but I will remark that the man has shown impressive range in the few stories […]

The Seal Maiden, by Victor Rousseau Emanuel originally appeared in the Nov 13, 1913 issue of ”The Cavalier”. It was reprinted in the February 1950 issue of A. Merritt’s Fantasy Magazine. It can be read here at Archive.org. Okay, one of the more knowledgeable old-timers here at Castalia needs to help me out. There has […]

The Science of Time-Travel by Ray Cummings originally appeared as the The Science of Time Travelling in the June 1944 issue of Super Science Stories and was reprinted in the February 1950 issue of A. Merritt’s Fantasy Magazine. It can be read here at Archive.org. Ray Cummings was something of a legend in the sci-fi […]

It is an eerie thing to reread the half-forgotten stories treasured in one’s youth. For better or worse, the hold haunts never look the same. The worse happens when eyes grown cynical with age will see tinsel and rubbish where once glamor gleamed as fresh and expectant as the sunrise in the Garden of Eden. […]

Three Lines of Old French by A. Merritt originally appeared in the August 9, 1919 issue of All-Story Weekly. It was reprinted in the February, 1950 issue of A. Merritt’s Fantasy Magazine, and can be read here from Archive.org. AMFM Follows up The Smoking Land with the A. Merritt short story “Three Lines of Old […]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Uther Pendragon sires a secret son and with his last breath sticks his sword into a rock and proclaims it a test to determine who shall inherit his crown. Arthur yoinks the sword, founds Camelot with its Knights of the Round Table, saves Britain from multiple threats, […]

It’s basically a given at this point that any entry in a long running franchise is going to generate a lot of emotional turmoil. Some of us are happy to return to a beloved universe. Some of us are angry that people would dare. Most of us are afraid of how they’re going to screw […]