A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Kirby O’Donnell and The Bloodstained God (REH)

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Kirby O’Donnell and The Bloodstained God (REH)

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

 

It can’t be a Summer of Pulp without some Robert E. Howard now, can it? Heck no!!! The looong shadow cast by my buddy Dave Hardy, with his two terrific essays on El Borak, still prevents me from tackling ‘The Swift.’

However, I am comfortable continuing to blaze my own trail regarding the similar, but different, Kirby O’Donnell.

I wrote about “Gold from Tartary,” and “Swords of Shahrazar,” in prior summers. Which just leaves the third, long-unpublished, “The Trail of the Bloodstained God.” Now having tackled this one, I’m sure there’s a Steve Clarney post (“The Fire of Asshurbanipal”) somewhere down the road.

In my first two essays, I explained how the second O’Donnell story, “Swords of Shahrazar,” found print first, in the October, 1934 issue of Top-Notch magazine. It was a direct sequel to “Gold from Tartary,” which appeared four months later in the January, 1935 issue of Thrilling Adventures. It’s quite likely that many people did not read “Swords,” then “Gold” shortly thereafter. But it certainly would seem odd to do so.

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Pseudoplumes, Nom de Nyms, Birds, & Oooze: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Language of the Night

Pseudoplumes, Nom de Nyms, Birds, & Oooze: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Language of the Night

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The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin
(trade paperback reprint from Perigee Books, 1980). Cover by Michael Mariano

I’m not a big fan of literary criticism in any field (although I have committed some), but one of my big books from my late teens onward was Le Guin’s The Language of the Night (1979), especially for the essays “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” and “A Citizen of Mondath.”

Le Guin has some great passages in “Citizen” about what she liked to read as a kid, and how she liked it.

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It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos, Part II

It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos, Part II

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The Haunted Palace (American International Pictures, August 28, 1963)

Yes, a new watch-a-thon, featuring me, a hopeless procrastinator, plumbing the depths of cinematic misery for your entertainment.

This time around, I will be watching Lovecraftian and Lovecraftian-tangential films, and as usual they must be films I’ve never seen before (which makes the task trickier and bound for disaster).

If you don’t know anything about Lovecraft’s writings, cosmic horror, the Mythos, or Cthulhu, that’s great — keep it that way. Onwards!

The Haunted Palace (1963) – Tubi

We kick off Part II with a stone-cold classic from AIP that I somehow had never seen before. A shock, I know.

Billed as Edgar Allen Poe’s The Haunted Palace, this film is, in reality, a retelling of Lovecraft’s ‘The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” with just a fraction of Poe’s original poem used to frame the film as opening and closing quotes.

Fans of the story will recognize many familiar elements; Vincent Price plays Charles Ward, who has brought his wife to Arkham to claim an old palace he has inherited from his long-gone descendant, Joseph Curwen. Curwen (who was burned alive 110 years ago) was an infamous warlock who terrorised the town until his fiery comeuppance. He cursed the lynch mob as he sizzled, and true to his word is resurrected through an old portrait that he uses to possess the hapless Ward. Ward/Cullen is aided by his two fellow warlocks, Jabez and Simon, and proceeds to take vengeance on the descendants of his killers. Shenanigans ensue.

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Tor Doubles #12: Roger Zelazny’s He Who Shapes and Kate Wilhelm’s The Infinity Box

Tor Doubles #12: Roger Zelazny’s He Who Shapes and Kate Wilhelm’s The Infinity Box

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Cover for He Who Shapes by Wayne Barlowe
Cover for The Infinity Box by Royo

He Who Shapes was originally serialized in Amazing Stories between January and February, 1965. It won the Nebula Award, tying with Brian W. Aldiss’s The Saliva Tree, which appeared as half of Tor Double #3. He Who Shapes is the first of three Zelazny stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series. Zelazny’s original title for the story was The Ides of Octember, which was changed before its initial publication. He eventually expanded the novella to the novel length The Dream Master and the original title was used on the story when it was reprinted in 2018 in the collection The Magic.

The story focuses on Charles Render, a neuroparticipant therapist, and drops the reader into a session, in which Render is creating a reality for his patient, in which the patient is Julius Caesar in a world in which the assassins kill Marcus Antonius while Caesar/the patient longs for martyrdom. Following the session, Zelazny introduces Render and his techniques to the reader in a manner which leaves no room to doubt that Render may be adept and the technical part of what he does. But his bedside manner leaves much to be desired.

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The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part III: Michael Moorcock, Michael Resnick, and Robert E. Howard

The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part III: Michael Moorcock, Michael Resnick, and Robert E. Howard

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The Warrior of Mars trilogy by Michael Moorcock: Warriors of Mars (DAW, January 1979), Blades of Mars (as by Edward P. Bradbury; Lancer, 1966), and Barbarians of Mars (DAW, March 1979). Covers by Richard Hescox, Gray Morrow, and Richard Hescox

Quite a few writers who went on to bigger names in other genres wrote some of their earliest books in Sword & Planet. Michael Moorcock was one of these. He’s mostly known for his Elric series. Elric is a kind of anti-Conan. But in 1964, at around the age of 25, he wrote three Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches set on Mars. In the introduction to a later release of these books he mentioned his early infatuation with ERB, and that after the publication of the first Elric book he was asked by another publisher to do a fantasy series for them.

He offered several possible author names and titles, and the books were published in 1965 under the name Edward Powys Bradbury as Warriors of Mars, Blades of Mars, and Barbarians of Mars. Later they were republished as City of the Beast, Lord of the Spiders, and Masters of the Pit under his own name. The hero is an earthman named Michael Kane and the adventures are very ERBian.

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Shouldn’t the Missing Be Missed?

Shouldn’t the Missing Be Missed?

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I’m a big fan of mystery stories, and I’ve read a lot of the genre’s major writers, from well-mannered Brits like Doyle, Christie, and Chesterton to hard-hearted Yanks like Hammet, Chandler, and McBain. A lot of their stories begin with a disappearance (even if they end with a corpse), and though in fiction the Great Detective always solves the case, in real life many disappearances remain unsolved, which makes them the most baffling mysteries of all. That may be why people still debate the fate of Judge Crater, search remote islands for a trace of Amelia Earhart, and argue over whether the New York Giants snap the ball over the remains of Jimmy Hoffa.

I don’t spend much time worrying about those folks — what really bothers me are the people who disappear on the internet, without Hercule Poirot or Philip Marlowe ever so much as lifting a finger to find them.

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Fifty Years of Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk

Fifty Years of Gary Gygax’s Greyhawk

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Dungeons & Dragons Supplement I: Greyhawk by Garg Gygax and Rob Kuntz
(TSR, 1975; reprint edition 2003). Cover and interior art by Greg Bell

Fifty years of Greyhawk and an amusing Castle Zagyg anecdote.

It has been 50 years since the release of the first and perhaps most important supplement to Dungeons & Dragons. It was none other than Supplement I: Greyhawk, by Gary Gygax and Robert Kuntz. This pivotal, 68-page book is not likely to be celebrated by the entity that owns the rights to D&D, because they do not look upon the original materials or its creators favorably. But we don’t need them to celebrate the anniversary of this great achievement.

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What I’ve Been Reading: June 2025

What I’ve Been Reading: June 2025

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Last week, I talked about the most recent audiobooks I’ve been listening to. After enjoying the Egil & Nix short story, two more Thieves World books, and finishing The Black Company again, I wanted more S&S. I have a Kothar book, but it’s an AI voice. Meh. So, I am listening to volume one of the Elric saga. Which I have read many times. Man – those stories are still terrific.

I’ve been watching a lot of movies and shows lately, so that’s probably gonna be a post soon. And I’ve been working on Fortnite levels. But I have also been sitting down with some books when I can. So away we go.

SEA OF GREED– Clive Cussler and Graham Brown

I used to stay up into the wee hours, devouring Clive Cussler and Robert Ludlum books. THOSE were page turners. Cussler ‘handed off’ his various series’ and seemed to be a franchise manager, rather than a writer. But they were still good (with one exception). Then he passed, so the lines are definitely just the work of the current authors.

I never did the Tom Clancy technical stuff, but I really like The Oregon Files. And I’m okay with Isaac Bell, though after the first one, I liked the concept more than the actual books. I’ve barely tried the Fargo series – meh. And I quit reading Dirk Pitt because Cussler gave it to his son (named Dirk) and he’s a bad writer. I read the first two and quit. Life’s too short to read bad books written through nepotism (Anne Hillerman is the poster child for this).

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A Stellar Lineup: Harlan Ellison, James Tiptree, Jr, Frederik Pohl, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, Poul Anderson, and more in The Alien Critic 7, edited by Richard E. Geis

A Stellar Lineup: Harlan Ellison, James Tiptree, Jr, Frederik Pohl, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, Poul Anderson, and more in The Alien Critic 7, edited by Richard E. Geis

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The Alien Critic Number Seven, November 1973. Published and edited by Richard E. Geis. I subscribed to TAC the following year after reading Geis’s column in IF.

Geis really had the juice back then — this issue includes Frederik Pohl, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, Damon Knight, Poul Anderson, Robert Bloch, Miriam Allen de Ford, Ross Rocklynne, “James Tiptree, Jr.,” and others — including a letter from Harlan Ellison that lists the then-current contents of The Last Dangerous Visions. Seriously.

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It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos, Part I

It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos, Part I

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H.P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones (Laurelwood Pictures, 2024)

Yes, a new watch-a-thon, featuring me, a hopeless procrastinator, plumbing the depths of cinematic misery for your entertainment.

This time around, I will be watching Lovecraftian and Lovecraftian-tangential films, and as usual they must be films I’ve never seen before (which makes the task trickier and bound for disaster).

If you don’t know anything about Lovecraft’s writings, cosmic horror, the Mythos, or Cthulhu, that’s great — keep it that way. Onwards!

H.P. Lovecraft’s The Old Ones (2024) – Tubi

Three years ago, I watched H.P. Lovecraft’s The Deep Ones (and wasn’t overly impressed), and here is Chad Ferrin’s follow-up to his own film. Apparently he has three planned, so bear that in mind.

This one continues the story of Russel Marsh (Robert Miano — excellent as usual), a salty sea captain who was possessed over a hundred years ago by ‘unspeakable horrors’, and who is now out for revenge. His plan is to go back in time using a ‘resonator’ and stop the Esoteric Order of Dagon from doing ghastly, fishy things. An added bonus would be reuniting with his wife, who likes to appear to him in nudie dream sequences.

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