Review (David A. Riley): This is a big book (579 pages), especially for a writer whose life ended after only thirty years. But when you look at the amazing literary legacy left behind by Robert E. Howard this is not too long a book at all. And Willard M. Oliver does full justice to all of Howard’s many stories, heroes, and the different genres in which he wrote, with chapters on Weird Tales.

Reading (Raymond Ibrahim): Join me, the world’s most formidable librarian, for a deep dive into the world of books — what I read, what you should read, reading strategies, and why books matter more than ever.

Appendix N (Goodman Games): Much as I’d like to hope that Gary Gygax read Harold Lamb, he’s unlikely to have found his way to any of Lamb’s most influential work. It’s not that Lamb wasn’t in print. From the 1940s on, his histories and biographies were a mainstay on library shelves, and many modern libraries retain his books to this day.

D&D (Dungeons and Dragons Fan): Last August at Wizards of the Coast’s annual D&D Direct event, the company officially announced that a new DnD Starter Set entitled Heroes of the Borderlands was in development. Now, after almost a year of waiting, the box set is finally here and is available from your local game store, D&D Beyond and Amazon.

Tolkien (Tolkienty): I would like to thank my friend Charlaine Tolkien for providing a copy of another letter. Thanks to my friendship with the Tolkien family from the USA, I was able not only to reconstruct their genealogy in detail and their connection to the Tolkiens from England through a common ancestor, the Gdańsk soldier Christian Tolkien (1706-1791).

Robert E. Howard (Sprague de Camp Fan): The Robert E. Howard Foundation has published three books that include fiction and non-fiction written by Robert E. Howard while he attended school. There is some duplication, and to my thinking, it is organized in a comprehensive but somewhat confusing way. I’m going to attempt a different organization and list the fiction and poetry produced in this period.

Science Fiction (Pulp Mortem): Is DAW The Greatest Publisher of all time? A Deep Dive into the History of DAW Books

Military Fiction (M Porcius): The Killing Ground has nine unnumbered chapters; this novel is episodic, and each chapter is almost like a complete short story that can stand its own.  The first, The Sea, introduces us to the crews of two troops of C Squadron as they ride a landing craft to the beach at Normandy.  (Each troop consists of three Churchill Mark 7 tanks; the entire Squadron totals eighteen tanks.  Each tank has a crew of five.)

History (Metatron): Were Medieval knights jacked?

Fiction (Arkhaven Comics): Sword & sorcery has antecedents. The main influences on the genre was not William Morris and E. R. Eddison. Robert E. Howard and probably Henry Kuttner and Clifford Ball grew up reading H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Jack London.

Horror (Old Style Tales): Written just after the apex of his astonishingly popular “The Bowmen” – at a time when it was now being passionately cited as a true story – “Out of the Earth” is a sinister transition away from the former story’s cheerful optimism. In August 1914, the British Army had its first encounter with the Germans at Mons – a battle that ended in an orderly retreat after a valiant effort at holding back the German military machine.

Art (Heritage Auctions): Frank Frazetta’s Defining Image of Conan Sells for Record-Shattering $13.5 Million at Heritage Auctions.

History (Raymond Ibrahim): Malta 1565: When 9/11 Marked the Defeat, Not Triumph, of Jihad

Conan (Michael K. Vaughan): Conan the Intellectual Property

Forthcoming (DMR Books): Last year DMR Books produced the Centennial Edition of A. Merritt’s fantasy classic The Ship of Ishtar. This edition included the author’s preferred text, plenty of illustrations, and supplementary material, some of it previously unpublished, making it a dream come true for longtime Merritt fans. Now Merritt’s novel Dwellers in the Mirage will get the same treatment!

Fiction (Black Gate): Lands of the Earthquake/Under a Dim Blue Sun is a “Double” novel, in the tradition of the old Ace Doubles. It contains a long novella by Henry Kuttner called Lands of the Earthquake, and a shorter novella by Howie K. Bentley called Under a Dim Blue Sun. Both fit the Sword & Planet mold (S&P).

Star Wars (Ryan Williamson): When Star Wars Daily asked if The Book of Boba Fett lived up to expectations, my gut reaction was immediate and visceral. After decades of waiting for more Boba Fett—from that first glimpse I saw as a kid in the theater in The Empire Strikes Back to countless Expanded Universe stories—Disney finally gave us a series dedicated to the galaxy’s most feared bounty hunter.

Fantasy (Tolkien and Fantasy): For anyone interested in the life and works of A. Merritt, the book A. Merritt: Reflections in the Moon Pool (1985), edited by Sam Moskowitz, is an extremely frustrating resource.* It is a hodge-podge of stray writings by Merritt (poems, stories, interviews, fragments) or about Merritt (poems in praise of Merritt, and fanzine articles on him), with interspersed and often confusing (if not contradictory) commentary by Moskowitz.

Fiction (Vintage Pop Fictions): During the 1960s Michael Crichton had written several thrillers under pseudonyms. The Andromeda Strain, which appeared in 1969, was his first novel published under his own name and was his first foray into science fiction. It is perhaps better considered as a techno-thriller since the technology in the story is cutting-edge present-day tech rather than futuristic tech.

Western (Rough Edges): A couple of weeks ago, I read the issue of RANCH ROMANCES that contained the first installment of Philip Ketchum’s serialized novel “Longhorn Stampede”. I didn’t read that installment in the pulp because I thought I had the novel version and would probably read it one of these days.

History (Frontier Partisans): The Lincoln County War in New Mexico in 1878 and the ruckus in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1881-82 are two of the main load-bearing episodes underpinning the American mythology of the Wild West. The tales of feud and gunfight surrounding these very real episodes have been told over and over again in history and in fiction, in print and on film, sometimes quite brilliantly, other times with scant regard for truth or authenticity.

Fantasy (Swords and Sorcery Magazine): Sword & Sorcery is a flexible athlete of a subgenre. Unlike the staid Historical Romance or creaking Cozy Cat Mysteries, S&S can be so many things to so many people. The reason for this is how it was created. It was born out of frustration. Robert E. Howard was the father of Sword & Sorcery. He didn’t create Fantasy.

Comic Books (Black Gate): have been reading Savage Sword of Conan lately. But earlier this year, I finished my reading of the first 115 issues of Conan the Barbarian. Those comprised Roy Thomas’ first run of the series, as he left Marvel. I wrote previously about how he brought Conan to Marvel.

He adapted several non-Conan stories, such as “The Marchers of Valhalla,” The Lost Valley of Iskander,” and “Black Canaan,” among many others.

Fiction (Matt Walsh): Rand Paul cites the book “To Kill A Mockingbird” in an effort to explain why we shouldn’t blow up drug cartel boats. There are a bunch of reasons why that argument isn’t compelling, starting with the fact that the book, despite being force-fed to every American child for decades, isn’t very good.