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sOne of my favorite recurring character series in the pulp magazines is the Tizzo the Firebrand by Frederick Faust. Faust (1892-1944) is better known under his pseudonym “Max Brand.” He was one of those high production pulp magazine writers who produced something like 25 million words of prose. He is remembered today as a western […]
Finally, a superhero for the modern age. As Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Man of Bronze be lifted up as a salve for an age of gritty, dark superhero flicks. Clark “Doc” Savage, Jr. is an unapologetically unironic pulp fiction superhero. Raised from birth to be the […]
I go to a lot of conventions each year, usually half a dozen between February and late October. Some conventions are an every-year occurrence, some conventions are a “once every two or three year” thing. Over the years, I’ve come up with some guidelines for what needs to get packed and how to avoid the […]
Some of the histories of fantasy fiction will mention that fantasy in general and sword and sorcery in particular disappeared during the 1940s. While this is technically true if given a strict interpretation, it is a mischaracterization. Sword and sorcery was disguised as adventure science fiction. There were writers including Leigh Brackett, Gardner Fox, and […]
“With 21st Century Science Fiction, David Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden give us a vivid snapshot of the fast-changing world of SF. Long recognised as trusted arbiters of the genre, these multiple award-winning editors showcase recent stories by science fiction’s brightest up-and-coming talents…” Back in the 20th century, Hartwell and Hayden were interviewed in Publisher’s […]
I recently got to go through, for lack of a better term, the game design slushpile for another publisher (I work, from time to time, as a freelance rules analyst/game fixer/game editor). I’m not going to name names, of either the publisher or the submitters, but I will highlight a common failing. Many game designers […]
F. van Wyck Mason was well known for sailing ship, American Revolution, and American Civil War historical novels. Before he was a best selling novelist, he wrote for the pulp magazines. His Captain North, a sort of proto-James Bond series appeared in Short Stories before the hardback novels. He wrote adventure stories as F. V. […]
Tolkien Solves the Problem of Evil “Thus it came to pass that of the Ainur some abode still with Illúvatar beyond the confines of the World; but others, and among them many of the greatest and most fair, took the leave of Illúvatar and descended into it. But this condition Illúvatar made, or it is […]
Snapshot in Time: The 2002 Hugo Recommended Ballots
Thursday , 30, April 2015 Uncategorized 1 CommentPossibly because of the records that have been legitimately broken, there have been a few minor misconceptions recently that a number of other events associated with the 2015 Hugo Awards process are unprecedented. One of these has to do with recommendation lists. By merely examining a single category (best novel) on the NESFA Recommendation list […]
Stars at War is our in-development universal campaign system for space combat games. The latest draft is up on our Patreon. At the “short period orbital space” view, Stars at War is a blend of Calhammer’s Diplomacy or Machiavelli, and a galactic-scale (or local star system) scale link-map, like was used for Starfire or Web […]
The Windy City Pulp & Paperback Show is one of my highlights of the year. I find all sorts of paperback books and pulp magazines at that show. My most interesting find last weekend was Heritage of the Flaming God by Frank J. Brueckel and John Harwood. This is a collection of essays about Edgar […]
This is an expansion of the topic I covered last week, about how skill systems generally suck. Skill systems particularly suck at modeling stealth and perception skills, and it’s not a tractable problem easily handled with binary resolutions. What follows is a somewhat rambling discussion of the problem, but, sadly, I’m a bit short on solutions. […]