The top article on the Black Gate blog last month was our look at Mike Resnick and Robert Garcia’s new anthology Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs. (A few weeks later Robert Garcia wrote his first Saturday blog post for us, a fond look back at The Pulp Art of Virgil Finlay. Do we bring the heavy hitters, or what?)

Second on the list was E.E. Knight’s open letter to Amy Farrah Fowler, a character on The Big Bang Theory, on her controversial theory that Indiana Jones had no impact on the ending of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Fight the good fight, Eric.

Third was Jon Sprunk’s look at his favorite fantasy films, followed by his article on the use of elves in fantasy lit. Way to hog the list, Jon. Rounding out the Top Five was James Maliszewski’s “Appendix T,” an attempt to craft a hypothetical Appendix N for the great Traveller RPG, listing roughly 20 works of classic science fiction that clearly influenced the game’s creators.

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in October were:

1. New Treasures: Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs
2. An Open Letter to Amy Farrah Fowler, Ph.D
3. My Favorite Fantasy Movies
4. To Elf or not to Elf: Races in Fantasy Lit
5. Appendix T
6. Richard Kadrey Talks with Black Gate about Dead Set
7. In Defense of Fantasy Heroes
8. Campbell’s Reheated Mythopoetic Soup
9. Remembering Dave
10. How Many Psychiatrists Does it Take to Change a Genre?

     

11. A Man Writing Female Characters
12. Finntroll! Viking Metal and the War Against Irony
13. Religion in Fantasy Lit
14. Fierce and Fey: An Interview with Artist Lauren K. Cannon
15. Inspiration and Emulation, Tolkien and Gygax
16. Aren’t You a Little Short for a Stormtrooper? Or, How to Describe Characters
17. The Roots of Early Love Go Deep: Five Stories Which Affected Me Deeply in My Early Teens
18. John Bellairs, Fred Saberhagen and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D
19. Conan: Caveman Battle Doom
20. Crowdfunding Kaleidoscope: An Interview with Julia Rios

     

21. Working with Stanley Schmidt
22. Where did Fantasy Come From? A Review of Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers
23. Scale: What Pre-Modern Battles Really Looked Like
24. Passive vs Active Heroes
25. The Horror: Oz meets the Scarecrow
26. A Return of Pacesetter RPG Style Horror
27. Oz and Frederic S. Durbin Discuss Halloween Monsters
28. Prince of Darkness on Blu-ray
29. Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Part 1 of 4
30. Dungeonslayers 4.0 & The Demolished Ones

     

31. Self-published Book Review: Mistress of the Dancing Bones by Thomas Alexander
32. Vintage Treasures: The Pirates of Zan by Murray Leinster
33. Vintage Treasures: Ronald Welch’s Knight Crusader
34. The Series Series: Naomi Novik’s Latest Novel of Temeraire
35. Appendix N: Carrying on the Flame
36. Q the Winged Serpent on Blu-ray
37. God Stalk by P. C Hodgell
38. The Cold Edge of Forever, II: City
39. Dracula has Risen from the Grave… Again
40. Ancient Worlds: The Ghosts of the Past

     

41. Ancient Worlds: The World on the Other Side of This One
42. Miracles Happen
43. New Treasures: The Harsh Suns by Jason E. Thummel
44. The Series Series: Mages Blood by David Hair
45. Ancient Worlds: Waking the Dead
46. Support The Great Way, an Epic Fantasy Trilogy by Harry Connolly
47. New Treasures: Cold and Dark
48. Excuse Me, Are You Using That Plot Device?
49. Sword & Sorcery for the Girl Who Wants to be Conan: Gaie Sebold’s Babylon Steel
50. The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in September are here, and you can see all 114 posts we made in the month of October here.