Tarzan.

John Carter.

Zorro.

Any magazine that published all three of these pulp, nay, American icons would be assured of its place in literary history. But Argosy is much more than that. Argosy is the first pulp fiction magazine, and by far one of the most prestigious of its time. With a run lasting from 1882 to 1978, Argosy set the standard for the entire field. While a general adventure magazine, Argosy dabbled in a little bit of everything, from the fantastic, science fiction, historical fiction, Westerns, war stories, and more. And whenever a genre grew popular in Argosy, some enterprising individual, such as Hugo Gernsback, would create a new genre pulp line to try to cash in its success.

Pulp fans tend to focus on the time between 1894 and 1942 as Argosy’s golden age. Prior to that time, Argosy focused mostly on children’s adventures. Soon, it faced the problem all children’s magazines faced: what happens when your audience grows too old for your stories. So Argosy retooled for a new audience: adults. And to compete, it developed a new format: the pulp magazine, printed on cheap paper.

Circulation quickly skyrocketed until in 1906, it reached a circulation of half a million copies per issue. By comparison, The Shadow at its height cleared 300,000, Amazing at science fiction’s all-time high, only 200,000, Weird Tales and Astounding averaged at 50,000, and today’s science fiction and fantasy magazines, only 5,000 per issue. Argosy’s success inspired a sister magazine, All-Story Weekly, with which it would later merge in 1920. Argosy would be sold to Popular Publications in 1942, which would spell the end of Argosy’s pulp focus, as it would begin to drift into men’s adventure before ending as an almost softcore magazine in the 1970s.

Argosy represents a merger of four magazines: the original Argosy, All-Story Weekly, Cavalier, and Railroad Man’s Magazine. The name changed often to reflect these mergers, but whether Golden Argosy, Argosy All-Story Weekly or Argosy and Railroad Man’s Magazine, the name always drifted back to Argosy. And because of the wide focus on various adventure genres, Argosy later gave birth to Famous Fantastic Mysteries, a magazine devoted to reprinting the best science fiction and fantasy stories found in Argosy. Famous Fantastic Mysteries would sit in science fiction’s Big Three throughout the 1940s alongside Astounding, Unknown, and Thrilling Wonder Stories.

But enough about history. Let’s get to the stories. Read More

The First Step (Cultivator vs. System #1) – Valerios

“Screw the System. I just want to Cultivate.”

Long Fang is stranded in a foreign world where proper cultivation has been replaced by annoying blue screens. He is confused and alone… but not for long.

Completely ignoring the System, he forms a wholesome sect of followers to spread cultivation across the wild world. Blue screens do not take kindly to rejection, however, and Long Fang’s stubbornness soon finds him pitted against increasingly dangerous foes.

To overcome the System tribulations, he must quickly grow stronger and wiser… But first, he needs to get past that one annoying town guard.

Liberty or Death (The Exiled Fleet #6) – Richard Fox

Commodore Gage leads a final, desperate attempt to save Albion.

A fragile alliance stands against the Daegon. Star nations with decades of war and hatred between them must unite against the invaders who will conquer them all without mercy. When Gage must destroy a key enemy installation, his coalition could crumble before the first shot is fired.

As that battle rages, Albion is dying. Her people crushed beneath the occupier’s heel, losing all they are as they’re turned into little more than slaves and cannon fodder for their oppressors.

Albion needs heroes, and Gage must find a way to free his home world before all is lost. There will be liberty or there will be death.

Mastering Magic (Jeff the Game Master #3) – Jaime Castle and Troy Osgood

What happens when the world’s most realistic game becomes more real than reality?

Logout button disabled, Jeff and crew find themselves stuck until they can defeat King Tom and the rogue patcher. The mystery still looms: who is behind Infinite Worlds’ attack?

Dan Shaklee, CEO of Hard Rock Data, makes discoveries with implications beyond anything he could’ve ever imagined.

King Tom, having assimilated nearly all of IW’s Principalities, has continued his onslaught. This time, creating an army of adorable but vicious Vorpal Rabbits, he has issued a command to the Dragon’s Banes: find and destroy all before they end the world.

Jeff, along with Dak, Jeweliette, Oliver, Torvi, Snapdragon—oh, and despite everyone’s desires, Crush and Vilecutter—must traverse the underground bunny burrows to put and end to it all.

It’s a race against time. Tensions are high. Patience is thin. Will they do it before their TerraMount systems give out and their mortal bodies follow? Read More

Against All Odds (Grimm’s War #1) – Jeffery Haskell

The wrong crew. The wrong ship. The right Captain.

Idealistic navy lieutenant Jacob Grimm just wanted to honor his mother’s sacrifice in the last great war. When he’s forced to return fire and destroy a squadron of ships to save his own, he thinks he’s the hero…

Until they discover the ships are full of children.

Disgraced and denied promotion, Jacob’s career is over. That is until the head of ONI needs a disposable officer to command a battered destroyer on the rim.

There’s just one problem, Interceptor hasn’t had a CO in months and the ship is a mess. Worse, the system he’s assigned to is corrupt and on the verge of all-out civil war with the Alliance.

However, no one told Jacob he was disposable.

Bonds of Blood (The Last Hunter #2) – J. N. Chaney and Terry Mixon

When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Commodore Jack Romanoff and his merry band of ragtag Navy rejects—skilled yet young war reenactors, a rescued Navy crew, and a Confederation spy—have rescued more than two hundred civilian ships and escaped a massacre in a battleship over two centuries old.

Too bad they blew a fusion plant doing it.

Trapped in a deserted system with the Locusts after them, they have a hard deadline to sort out the mess. Standing in the way is an arrogant Navy captain unwilling to bend his stiff neck, and the man’s unexpected—and unwelcome—allies.

Yet clever friends and shocking secrets may still turn the tide.

Jack and his crew have only one chance to get it right. To do that, he must bind them all together with bonds of blood.

Head Case (Starship for Sale #2) – M. R. Forbes

Ben never thought owning a starship would be easy. He didn’t expect it to be quite like this.

It was one thing to take a job as a smuggler to pay for basic necessities like maintenance, fuel, and food. Another to have one of the most powerful nobles in the galaxy gunning for him at every turn. But when Keep turns up unexpectedly with a new offer that’s even wilder than the last, will it put him on the path toward his true destiny?

Or is it just another con?

In Another World, I Must Defeat the Demon King – Miles English

Don’t bring a sword to a gunfight… Unless it has +5 radiant damage.

Henry’s life as a valiant defender of the realm is over—stolen away when he is transported to a strange new world. Instead of horses and swords, it has cars, rent, hamburgers, and a gun-toting part-time waitress named Shana. There isn’t much use for a white knight atop a fiery steed… or is there?

Thankfully, Henry’s ability to level up and unlock powerful new skills hasn’t abandoned him. In fact, Shana is starting to level up, too. But there’s a catch. Turns out, they’ve caught the attention of a secret society that’s devoted to the very system of power that Henry was raised on. Led by the enigmatic Demon King, they aren’t happy about newcomers getting involved in their affairs. Magic, power, experience—the Society wants it all for themselves, and they’ll happily kill whoever it takes to keep it that way. Read More

Ben Martin is a Vietnam veteran with his own storefront business in New York. The mob wants its cut. Martin tells them to pound sand. An ambitious but daft faction of the mob kidnaps Martin’s kid, who dies in their inattentive care. 

War ensues.

Sometimes it is the journey rather than the destination that matters. And while the conclusion to Jon Messmann’s The Revenger is never in doubt, the story is of how a man with a unmovable moral anchor makes the rest of the world break around him. Including his own wife, who cannot stand behind Martin as he stands up to the mob. The action is visceral, with the reversals of fortune common in such fights. More surprisingly, The Revenger is passionate, and does not neglect the emotional toll of grief, vengeance, and one man doing what is right no matter the personal cost. Yet the most compelling character might just be the mob boss who has to sacrifice his own family to Martin, else honor and vengeance will remain unsatisfied.

Out in the snowy frontier, a man known only as Cutter watches over a child. When a black-clad patrol descends on the town, Cutter must take the boy from his adoptive parents and flee into the Fey-riddled forests. For Cutter was not always a woodcutter. He was once known as the Kingslayer. And Oathbreaker. And his past has caught up with him once more. And, unless Cutter can escape it, it will kill everyone in his path.

Jacob Peppers claims to write grimdark fantasy with A Warrior’s Burden. Instead, he writes of the mature hero, faced with the failures of ambition and character, who still must fight on. It’s the reverse side of today’s fascination with young heroes, calls to adventure, and mentors. The side where the middle-aged hero sits uneasily in the world he has created and must correct it. Or die trying. As such, Peppers addresses a rarely serviced marker: fantasy for the middle-aged man.

Peppers runs heavy on the action, regrets, and other cares of the moment, dealing out backstory with an almost miserly hand. But the drips of revelation only serve to heighten the tension of the moment. A Warrior’s Burden is small scope fantasy done right, with the potential to blow into a far larger conflagration.

The Broken Man: The Rise of the Fisher King – Hawkings Austin

A Shadow Man is stalking the children of Ard, leaving the dead lying in the forest with their eyes black pits. The people are in a panic, but the investigating Ruad philosophers have no explanation. Seeking someone to blame, the people of the ancient city of Ard demand the head of the most dangerous person in their midst, the giant Waylaid.

Once great among the Fomor – a prince, a sorcerer, a priest – Waylaid has been cast out by his people. He has come to Ard with his Bolg apprentice, Piju, to live quietly and study in Brea’s library. Can he escape the maddened crowed and find the killer without breaking his vow to give up sorcery?

And has he failed to teach his young and impetuous apprentice the most important lesson of them all, that the price of using sorcery is always too high?

Darkness and Stone (The Lost #3) – Peter Nealen

Debts Owed. Debts Paid.

After the hunt for the vampire, Conor McCall’s Recon Platoon and their Tuacha allies can turn their attention to unfinished business. The Marines lost men in the Land of Ice and Monsters. They only know that those men are missing.

Without a body, ain’t nobody dead.

In search of their missing comrades—and Mathghaman Mag Cathal’s old nemesis—they return to the north.

Only to stumble into a bigger war than they’d expected. Their only allies in that harsh, frozen, haunted land are besieged by forces wielding powers they’ve only seen once before.

Now they must face terrible sorcery and horrific odds, as the question remains:

Will they accomplish their mission… Or die trying?

Escaping Gravity (Infinite Horizons #1) – J. D. Sullivan

Dillon Mackey has always wanted to travel the stars…

When brilliant scientist and inventor Sherisza Rousilarru offers him an apprenticeship aboard her starship, he leaps at the chance to escape a boring future in the law.

But she’s not the last of her kind for no reason. Dillon finds himself caught up in intrigue and adventure across systems, empires, and alien worlds he’d only dreamt of ever seeing.

Just what other secrets does his reclusive mentor hide? And will being her apprentice make him a target of her enemies? Read More