Robert E. Howard (Mystery and Mayhem): The Berkley paperbacks of Robert E. Howard.

Fiction (Grognardia): That, and the incomparable writing of Ray Bradbury, are probably the reasons why I have such a fondness for the 1962 novel, Something Wicked This Way Comes. It probably helps, too, that the novel begins in a way that has always rung particularly true to me:

Cinema (Ashlander Analysis): For those not au fait with commercially unsuccessful fantasy from the 80s, Fire and Ice needs some introduction. This was Ralph Bakshi’s third fantasy animation after Wizards (1977) and The Lord of the Rings (1978), both of which have been covered here before.

Tolkien (Wizards and Warriors): Elven Armies of the Second Age – Middle-Earth Lore DOCUMENTARY

Fiction (Arkhaven Comics): The 1940s took a lighter tone turn in terms of fantasy fiction. The influence of Thorne Smith’s novels like Topper and Stephen Vincent Benet’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (Saturday Evening Post, October 24, 1936) seeped into pulp writing. John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Stories (later Astounding Science Fiction) edited a fantasy magazine entitled Unknown (later Unknown Worlds).

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Frontier Partisans): Edgar Rice Burroughs’ great-granddaughters, Llana Jane Burroughs and Kathy Bonnaud, unveiled a monument Sept. 27 to the Tarzan and John Carter author’s cavalry service at the Willcox, Arizona, train depot where the author arrived in May 1896.

D&D (Goodman Games): Like many my age, I was introduced to roleplaying games through the Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set whose rulebook was edited by Dr. J. Eric Holmes. Upon reading it, I was immediately enthralled and soon acquired the Monster Manual, the first of many TSR products that I would seek out over the weeks and months to come.

Science Fiction (Black Gate): Edmond Hamilton, who I’ve mentioned here before as Leigh Brackett’s husband, wrote mostly Science fiction and I consider him one of the first generation of Space Opera writers. And one of the best of the bunch. You might wonder what Space Opera is and how it differs from Sword & Planet fiction, as well as from more mainstream SF. Well, let me explain.

Science Fiction (Dark Worlds Quarterly): For the past Edmond Hamilton adventures, “The Fire Princess”, “The Lake of Life”, and “The Six Sleepers”, the pattern was set by A. Merritt, with his lost worlds where terrible evil holds thrall over the inhabitants. In “The World With a Thousand Moons”, Ed was working in a Stanley G. Weinbaum mode. Today the influence changes again, this time either Nictzin Dyalhis’s “The Sapphire Goddess” or possibly Homer Eon Flint’s The Blind Spot.

Pastiche (Black Gate): And we are wrapping up Cimmerian September. Which I think will be an annul thing here at Black Gate. Maybe I’ll do a broader Robert E. Howard month around his birth (January) or death (June). But it’s more Conan this week.

Reading (The Second Story): The American education system definitely has problems, but what if those problems have also killed modern writers’ ability to write well? Why is everyone so reliant on Chat GPT and Grammarly? Why can’t anyone write well? To answer, we have to go back to school.

Radio (Old Time Radio): “The Dunwich Horror”. A confusing story about a monster loose in the countryside. Ronald Colman should never be cast as a radio announcer! The production features wll done sound effects. + The dogs of old Dunwich village have been barking for three days and three nights and the horror to which their barking portents, this unbelievable horror must be made believable to you and must occur tonight the eve of old Hallows for tomorrow it will be too late.

Pulp (Glorious Trash): It’s funny; the volumes of The Spider that I think I won’t enjoy turn out to be the most entertaining. It happened before with Reign Of The Death Fiddler, and now again with The Cholera King. Norvell “Grant Stockbridge” Page really keeps the story moving…mostly because he changes the direction of the plot so many times that the book veritably speeds by.

Blogs (Archive.org): I recently read some perceptive comments on the TTA Press Discussion Forum about two of the Big Names in the Weird Fiction field, S. T. Joshi and Don Herron. The posts were intriguing because they did not come from the usual crowd. These are not fans plugged into the main Howard scene, and hence are people who are judging the merits and demerits of Joshi and Herron objectively.

Pulp (Vintage Pop Fictions): The Ki-Gor stories by John Peter Drummond were published in the pulp magazine Jungle Stories, beginning in 1938. The Complete Series Volume 1 edition contains six early stories. These are jungle adventure tales very very obviously influenced by the Tarzan stories. In fact the basic premise is pretty much lifted directly from the original 1914 Edgar Rice Burroughs novel Tarzan of the Apes.

Fiction (Paperback Warrior): Charles Boeckman (1920-2015) authored stories for digests and pulps like Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Detective Tales, All-Story Detective, and Dime Mystery. While performing New Orleans jazz for 70 years, the multi-talented writer authored a number of novels with his wife Patti as well as penning sleaze paperbacks under the pseudonym of Alex Carter. Bold Venture Press has spotlighted the author and his literary work with several reprints, as well as his autobiography. I’ve read a lot of Boeckman over the years, but occasionally I drop in and out of his short stories for quick enjoyment.

Horror (Too Much Horror Fiction): Well, the time has come: after seven years and almost two dozen titles, Valancourt Books’ series of horror fiction reprints, curated by me and Grady Hendrix and inspired by our 2017 nonfiction book Paperbacks from Hell, will come to an end. I know that’s not news you wanna hear! We’re proud of what we’ve accomplished and the books we chose.

Science Fiction (M Porcius): Over the years I have acquired a tall stack of paperback anthologies, so let’s take off the pile a book I’ve owned for over a decade and read some of the stories printed therein by people with whose work we already have some familiarity.  Today’s subject: Seven Come Infinity, edited by Groff Conklin and published here in the republic in 1966 by Fawcett Gold Medal and reprinted in the United Kingdom a year later by Coronet. 

Horror (Por Por Books): ‘The Rats’ first was published by New English Library in 1974. This 27th printing was issued in 1990 by the New English Library / Hodder and Stoughton. ‘The Rats’ was the first novel by UK writer James Herbert (1943 – 2013) and a foundational novel in the genre that gradually would come to be known as splatterpunk.