D&D (Dungeons & Dragons Fan): As a result, Wizards of the Coast has put significantly more emphasis on enhancing Maps, including rolling out a number of new features that make it more competitive with major VTTs like Roll20, Foundry and Fantasy Grounds. As of September 16th, 2025, Maps is now completely free to all D&D Beyond users, regardless of subscription level.

Cinema (Fandom Pulse): Joseph Mallozzi is a Stargate veteran joining Stargate SG-1 in its fourth season and going on to executive produce Stargate: Atlantis, Stargate Universe and create his own show Dark Matter. He spoke with Fandom Pulse about the current state of science fiction in Hollywood, what projects he’s working on, and what some of his TV recommendations are.

Science Fiction (With Both Hands): Last week on X/Twitter I offered some suggestions in Travis Corcoran’s thread about science fiction that belongs in the canon of Great American Literature. Lots of other people I know chimed in with good suggestions, but I wanted to step back from science fiction in particular in order to explore a broader topic.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (Erbzine): MAN, MONSTER, OR JUNGLE GOD? They called him Number 13, the latest and best of Dr. Von Horn’s attempts to make life from lifeless chemicals. He found himself an almost-human on Von Horn’s hideaway jungle island off the coast of Borneo. He saw the monsters that preceded him, growing used to the dreadful travesties of humanity.

Obituary (Too Much Horror Fiction): Prolific, long-time author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has died at age 82. Known for her historical horror novels about the vampire Count Saint-Germain, Yarbro also wrote excellent short stories and horror movie novelizations. Here is my (unfortunately incomplete) collection of her mass market paperbacks.

Warhammer (Wertzone): The planet Tartarus has come under heavy attack by the Orks, hard-pressing the planet’s Imperial Guard defenders. The Blood Ravens chapter of Space Marines arrives to reinforce the planet and carry the fight to the Ork forces, but with both the Eldar and Chaos Marines also playing a role in events on the planet, it is clear that more is going on behind the scenes…

Fiction (Vintage Pop Fictions): There was a lot more to Sax Rohmer than the Fu Manchu books. He wrote detective stories many of which had supernatural elements, or at least suggestions of the supernatural. And he wrote some fine gothic horror. Black Dog Books have collected a varied assortment of his early stories in The Green Spider: and Other Forgotten Tales of Mystery and Suspense.

Tolkien (Pastor Theologians): J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote that his legendarium is “mainly concerned with Fall, Mortality, and the Machine.”[1] Nowhere is this clearer than in his tale of the rise and fall of Númenor—the great island kingdom. Raised from the sea by divine gift, Númenor was blessed beyond all others in wisdom, power, and prosperity. Yet, in the end, Númenor was destroyed, not by war or invasion, but by its own pride.

Pulp (Arkhaven Comics): Some of the classic Weird Tales writers were readers of Adventure magazine. In addition to Robert E. Howard, you had Edmond Hamilton who was a big Harold Lamb fan. H. Warner Munn and Fritz Leiber were huge Tros of Samothrace fans. Leigh Brackett attempted to write some adventure fiction with no success early in her career. So chainmail and bucklers are very much in the literary DNA of the genre.

Robert E. Howard (Michael K. Vaughn): El Borak and Other Desert Adventures

Science Fiction (Strange at Ecbatan): In this space I have previously posted reviews of Castaways’ World and The Repairmen of Cyclops. I figured it was time to post a review of Secret Agent of Terra — and why not just assemble all three into a review of the omnibus. So here we are!

The other two novels were Castaway’s World and Secret Agent of Terra. Brunner later revised them both, retitling the first Polymath and the second The Avengers of Carrig. An omnibus of all three novels (The Repairmen of Cyclops very lightly revised) was published in the UK in 1989 as Victims of the Nova.

Reading (Imaginative Conservative): Consider Time Magazine and the online archive of its covers. In 1967, Robert Lowell was the last poet to appear on the cover of Time. He had been preceded by Robinson Jeffers, Gertrude Stein, Amy Lowell, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, T.S. Eliot, and Evgeny Evtushenko.

Tolkien (Tolkien Society): Brand-new revised and expanded hardback edition of this best-selling graphic novel based on the enchanting prelude to The Lord of the Rings.

Fully painted in colour, it contains a carefully abridged version of Tolkien’s tale of the hobbit, Bilbo Baggins, who is whisked off by the wizard Gandalf on an adventure to recover stolen treasure.

Clark Ashton Smith (DMR Books): Clark Ashton Smith was in some ways a writer of setting. At least, his stories tend to be grouped by setting. The ancient continent of Hyperborea, the imaginary French province of Averoigne, and the far future of Zothique are what fans think of when they think of Smith. Yet, he certainly wrote stories set in other locales. Some like “Genius Loci” are set in the contemporary world. Then there are those set in outer space both in and out of the solar system.

History (James LaFond): The best book is titled the Spartacus War by a man whose name, is, I think, Barry Strauss. The hard back has a white dust cover. I also read on the subject in a number of general histories of gladiators and in Roman history, either Plutarch or Appian. Varro and Sallust are sources I have not read who are cited on the internet searches. Note that even when one prompts for ancient sources, mostly modern summaries appear. Here wee are, in the world Spartacus fought against, where the past is for sale and truth has a high price.

Pulp (Pulp Super Fan): Frank Eisgruber Jr.‘s Gangland’s Doom is one of the first book-length works on The Shadow, preceding Will Murray‘s The Duende History of The Shadow (1980) and Robert Sampson‘s The Night Master (1982).

Tolkien (Dimitra Fimi): During the last few days, I’ve been re-reading J.R.R. Tolkien’s Roverandom, the story he wrote in the 1920s, inspired by the loss of a small leaden toy dog by his second son, Michael. The tale is rather episodic, following a little dog, Rover, and his transformations from real dog, to tiny toy dog, to a fairy-dog, to a moon-dog, and then mer-dog, until he comes back full circle and is returned to his real nature and size.

Science Fiction (Rough Edges): This is actually a fairly sedate cover by Allen Anderson on this issue of PLANET STORIES. There’s a good group of writers inside, too, including Ray Bradbury (with a reprint from MACLEAN’S), Damon Knight, Alfred Coppel, Henry Hasse, Basil Wells, Stanley Mullen, and the less well-known (at least to me) Robert Abernathy and George Whitley.

C. S. Lewis (Real Clear Books): The underlying thread across Lewis’s work is his recognition that we have become disenchanted and thus contemptuous in a world stripped of imaginative thinking. His response wasn’t withdrawal, but a call to see the world differently — to cultivate the childlike wonder that allows us to find meaning and beauty even in the mundane.

Conan (Silver Key): I don’t mind pastiche … which is I suppose a bit of a lukewarm way of saying I support it. Nonetheless it’s how I feel. I’m on record as loving SSOC and Roy Thomas stories and even (gasp) some of the old Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp Conan stories. I’m not a purist, as long as we have unadulterated Howard somewhere in print I’m good with new stories and interpretations. The Del Reys stand, so bring on the rest.

H. P. Lovecraft (Tentaclii): * An interesting new psychogeography Phd thesis, Atmospheric War and the Fantastic: Andre Breton, H.P. Lovecraft, and Richard S. Shaver (2025), from the University of California. Freely available online, and 165 pages. Examines how…

Magazines (Por Por Books): So here in 2025, Heavy Metal magazine has undergone another reboot, this time with Marshall Lees as CEO and publisher, and Frank Forte as editor. The initial issue was Kickstarted back in October 2024, and on sale in April. Now the second issue is available.

Tolkien (Gavin the Medievalist): Tolkien is the reason I went to graduate school, but is his translation of Beowulf any good? Tolkien’s translation has lots to offer, even if it isn’t the best representation of the medieval poem to people who are unfamiliar with the original story. In this video, I review the contents of the book to show that the books real insight is what it shows us about how Tolkien thought about this famous medieval poem.

Fiction (Frontier Partisans): We’re in the countdown to the October 7 release of Jack Carr’s Cry Havoc.

Just before the Tet Offensive changes the dynamic in Vietnam, before President Johnson announces he will not run for reelection, before the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, as riots and protests rage across the nation, a spy ship, the USS Pueblo, is captured by communist forces off the coast of North Korea. The crew thought they had destroyed everything of intelligence value. They were wrong.

T.V. (Frontier Partisans): We’re getting a new Robin Hood series come November. There have been so many disappointments associated with that proto-Ranger tale, I am loathe to get my hopes up. “Modern take on a classic tale” always makes me leery. But… Sean Bean as the Sheriff of Nottingham bodes well…

Clark Ashton Smith (Comics Radio): Smith’s second trip to Mars was a vast improvement over his first. Perhaps because this was purely his own story–he didn’t have to work from someone else’s plot this time. But regardless of the reason, “Vaults of Yoh-Vombis,” published in the May 1932 issue of Weird Tales, is fantastic. 

History (Raymond Ibrahim): Forged in the Crusades as a banner of war against Islam, its modern use comes full circle in a strikingly ironic twist of history—and serves as a reminder of what happens to those who forget history.

Fantasy (Dark Worlds Quarterly): The book is The Druid Stone (1967) by Simon Majors who was actually S&S superstar, Gardner F. Fox. The Paperback Library cover reeks of the late 1960s occult fetish that embraced everything from The Bermuda Triangle to witchcraft. And if that kinda thing isn’t your bag, don’t worry about it. Because this book is really two books: a tale of modern occultism and a hidden Sword & Sorcery saga. Still not interested? Oh, you should be.

Weird Tales (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Every so often I like to offer readers here something to listen to instead of eyeball. Here are fifty tales from the original Weird Tales for your listening pleasure. Some are classics while others may be new to you. Plenty of Lovecraft and Mythos since those appeal to Youtubers. I think for me the biggest surprise here is how many I selected from 1933. What a bumper crop that year! Farnsworth Wright’s tenure dominates as it should with the 1930s being the largest grouping.

Robert E. Howard (Black Gate): Here’s a Cliff’s Notes version: Nabonidus, the Red Priest, is the real power in this unnamed Corinthian city. He gives a golden cask to Murilo, a young aristocrat. And inside the cask is a human ear (remind you of Sherlock Holmes? It should.). We learn a little later on that Murillo has been selling state secrets, and the ear is from a clerk he had dealings with. The jig is up!

Sword & Planet (Black Gate): Leigh Brackett (1915 – 1978) is my favorite from among the second generation of Sword & Planet writers (S&P). Many people I meet recognize her name from her association with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, for which she wrote the initial script. Or for the script to The Big Sleep, which she also wrote. Or, for several western movies she wrote the scripts for.

T.V. Tie In (Paperback Warrior): The legendary disagreement stemmed from an argument with my wife over what she perceived as an overabundance of A-Team paperbacks stuffing shelves in book stores, flea market tables, yard sale boxes, and library sales. Maybe she was right. Maybe there are millions upon millions of A-Team paperbacks littering the planetary surface. Sure. However, to this day, I think she was confusing the A-Team with another similar-sounding title, Able Team. The Los Angeles Times reported in 1987 that Gold Eagle had shipped over 500 million paperbacks across five men’s action-adventure series titles they published – one of which was Able Team. 

Pulp (Grognardia Games Direct): As longtime readers surely know, Pulp Fantasy Library is one of the oldest and most enduring features on Grognardia. The very first installment appeared on January 5, 2009 and, over time, the series grew to encompass more than 300 entries. Few things I’ve written for this blog have generated as much interest, commentary, and sheer staying power as this series, which continues to attract readers old and new, even though, until fairly recently, I had stopped writing new Pulp Fantasy Library posts.

Music (Imaginative Conservative): A song cycle for voice (usually bass or bass-baritone) and piano, Modest Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death is a setting of four poems by Arseny Golenishchev-Kutuzov. The four sections each describe a different type of death: “Lullaby” (the death of a child in his mother’s arms); “Serenade” (the death of a young woman); “Trepak” (the death of a drunken man); “The Field Marshall” (the death of men in war).