The top article on the Black Gate blog last month was the 13th installment in our ongoing examination of Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction line, a look at the 1977 paperback The Best of Fredric Brown. (Brown also showed up a little further down the list, in our take on the Brown and Weinbaum chapters of the Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D series over at Tor.com).

Second on the list was Alex Bledsoe’s appreciation of one of my favorite films of the summer, Pacific Rim, and his thoughts on where it fit on the sliding scale between rip-off and homage.

Third was our review of a surprisingly effective, 81-year-old pulp tale by Clark Ashton Smith, “The Vaults of Yoh Vombis.” Fourth was M Harold Page’s report on his trip to the Gemmell Award ceremonies at the World Fantasy Convention. Rounding out the Top Five was Keith West’s opening chapter in his ambitious attempt to review the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series.

The complete Top 50 Black Gate posts in November were:

1. Vintage Treasures: The Best of Fredric Brown
2. Pacific Rim and the Culture of Rip-off vs Homage
3. Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Vaults of Yoh Vombis”
4. The Sword Folk are Coming
5. Lin Carter and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series
6. Goodbye, Blockbuster
7. Revisiting the Scene of the Crash: John Carpenters Ghosts of Mars
8. Magic: Let’s Ditch Clarke’s 3rd law
9. Thank Politically Correct Parents for Sword and Sorcery
10. Nobody Gets Out Alive: Writing Advice from the Cheap Seats
11. Goth Chick News: Max Brooks takes on Walking Dead with Extinction Parade
12. Arak Interlude: Sexuality in Comics and Culture
13. Neoclassical Adventure
14. A Contagious Love of Fantasy: Lin Carter’s Imaginary Worlds
15. Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1951: A Retro Review
16. Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty by Manly Wade Wellman
17. 2013 World Fantasy Award Winners Announced
18. A Hero in the Service of Organized Crime: A Review of Jhereg by Steven Brust
19. What I Learned From A New Hope
20. An American Fantasy Master: The Pulp Art of Virgil Finlay

     

21. Tell us your Favorite Sword & Sorcery tale and win a copy of Stalking the Beast!
22. You Keep Using This Word
23. Manly Wade Wellman, Fletcher Pratt and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D
24. The Hero’s Struggle
25. Jack Ripcord and the Evolution of Pulp
26. Self-published Book Review: The Nameless Dwarf by D. P. Prior
27. The Plot Thickens. Or Maybe Stretches
28. The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks Wins the 2013 David Gemmell Legend Award
29. Science Fiction from China
30. Unlikely Story: BG Interviews the Editors

     

31. Blogging Marvel Comics’ Dracula, Lord of the Undead
32. New Treasures: Star Trek Catan
33. Deepest Darkest Eden, Edited by Cody Goodfellow
34. Plot, Plain and Simple
35. Vintage Treasures: Pirates and Plunder
36. Heroic Historical and Uncomfortable Truths
37. A Look Into the Heart of the Great Continent: Milt Davis’ Woman of the Woods
38. The Beautiful Nightmare of The Time Masters
39. An Addendum on Tie-in Fiction
40. Forgotten Pulp Villains: Hanoi Shan and Professor Colonna

     

41. Tales of the Wold Newton Universe, Part 3 of 4
42. Rick Lai and the Secret Histories of Pulp Fiction
43. Vintage Treasures: Prince of Foxes by Samuel Shellabarger
44. Insanity in Pictures
45. Amazing Science Fiction, December 1959: A Retro-Review
46. Securing Gamer Posterity
47. Fredric Brown, Stanley G. Weinbaum, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D
48. Blogging Arak Son of Thunder 11: Valda Dances Right Out of Her Armor
49. Watch the First Trailer for Winters Tale
50. New Treasures: Pathfinder Tales: Stalking the Beast by Howard Andrew Jones

The Top 5o Black Gate blog posts in October are here, and you can see all 94 posts we made in the month of November here.