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Forgotten Authors: Austin Hall

Forgotten Authors: Austin Hall

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Austin Hall

Austin Hall was born on July 27, 1880.

While working as a cowboy, Hall was asked to write a story. This led to his career as an author, writing westerns, science fiction and fantasy stories, with westerns forming the majority of his published work. A one time, Hall may have worked as a sports editor for a newspaper in San Francisco.

Following the death of Hall’s father, his mother remarried and the family appears to have moved to Ohio, in an interview published by Forrest J Ackerman in 1933, Hall claims to have attended college in Ohio and California, but no details of his academic life can be confirmed. By the time he was thirty, Hall (as well as his mother and step-father) were living back in California and Hall had married Clara Mae Stowe and they had two children, Javen and Bessie.

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Let’s Go to the Movies: 1996

Let’s Go to the Movies: 1996

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1996 was 30 years ago. And it was quite the year for movies. Big-screen extravaganzas dominated the box office, and some movies outside the Top 10 still more than resonate today.

On July 3, Independence Day dropped. Man, that was a huge hit. EVERYBODY I knew saw, or was talking, about it. And smooth crooner Harry Connick Jr. became a lot more popular. With a US gross of $306,156,000 ($644,338,000 in today’s dollars) on a budget of $75 million, it was a smash hit.

Big-screen action continued the trend of domination, with Twister ($241,721,000) second, and The Rock ($134,069,000) fourth.

And at number three saw the birth of a mega-franchise that seven hit follow-ups and which only wrapped up last year: Mission Impossible. That first movie was an homage to the original series, and I really liked it. Then John Woo turned it into special effects cotton candy and I never watched another installment.

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Forgotten Authors: Neil R. Jones

Forgotten Authors: Neil R. Jones

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Neil R. Jones

Neil R. Jones was born on May 29, 1909 in Fulton, New York, the youngest for four children. He has stated that the first science fiction novel he read, in 1918. Was Will N. Harben’s The Land of the Changing Sun, a lost world novel, which led him to the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

His first published story, “Vengeance of the Ages” was published in his high school yearbook in 1926, with a second story, “The Meteor of Fate” appearing the following year.

“The Death Head Meteor,” was his first professional publication, published in the January 1930 issue of Air Wonder Stories and is believed to contain the first appearance of the word “astronaut.” He had previously sold the story “The Electrical Man,” but it didn’t appear until May of that year in Scientific Detective Monthly, earning him his first cover.

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Dark Muse News: Reviewing Arcane Arts and Cold Steel by David C. Smith

Dark Muse News: Reviewing Arcane Arts and Cold Steel by David C. Smith

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Arcane Arts and Cold Steel (Pulp Hero Press, December 24, 2025)

From History to Writing Sword and Sorcery, Pulp Hero Press has us covered

In 2019, Pulp Hero Press published Brian Murphy’s Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, which was notably covered by David C. Smith (link to review) and John O’Neill (link) on Black Gate. O’Neill highlighted that Brian Murphy was one of the earliest contributors to Black Gate, from way back in 2012! Six years have passed since the publication of Flame and Crimson; whereas the subtitle and focus of that was a history of Sword & Sorcery (S&S), Pulp Hero Press just followed with a sequel focused on writing it, penned by David C. Smith with a foreword by John O’Neill.

This post covers the complementary book Arcane Arts and Cold Steel: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction (Pulp Hero Press 2025, 298 pages).  Greg Mele recently posted a Black Gate article on how this book is The Literary Sorcerer’s Toolkit; read that to learn more about the author.

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Twin Peaks Meets Arthur Conan Doyle

Twin Peaks Meets Arthur Conan Doyle

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Mark Frost co-created, co-wrote, and co-produced, Twin Peaks. That includes the 2017 reboot (which I abandoned early on. I’m a huge fan of the original series, but the restart did nothing for me.

He also wrote the two Fantastic Four films with Jessica Alba (which I said here, are better than people give it credit), as well as 42 episodes of Hill Street Blues, which was an extremely influential cop show in the eighties.

Frost wrote the dark James Spader movie, Storyville after Twin Peaks ended. And he also wrote a novel, which came out in 1993.

The List of 7 came about because Frost is a Sherlock Holmes fan. Not only is the novel’s protagonist none other than Arthur Conan Doyle and bits of his life are scattered throughout, but there are Holmes-isms aplenty. Thus, the book is a type of pastiche, though darker than any straight Holmes tale I’ve read.

A struggling young doctor who hasn’t yet created Holmes, Doyle receives a mysterious summons to what turns out to be a séance. Really creepy stuff happens, people die, a mysterious rescuer appears, and Doyle spends the rest of the book on the run from a dark conspiracy. Turns out that his completely fictional novel submission, The Dark Brotherhood, exactly mirrors a real group. And as you can guess by the name, it’s a really evil secret organization. Man, don’t you hate it when that happens!

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Forgotten Authors: P. Schuyler Miller

Forgotten Authors: P. Schuyler Miller

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P. Schuyler Miller

Peter Schuyler Miller was born on February 21, 1912 in Troy, New York. He earned a Master of Science from Union College and worked as a technical writer for General Electric and the Fisher Scientific Company.

Miller had a lifelong interest in archaeology and was a member of the New York State Archaeological Association.

His first published short story “The Red Plague,” appeared in the July 1930 issue of Wonder Stories. Based on the cover of the magazine’s January issue, it was the first winner of a contest Wonder Stories ran, earning Miller publication and $150. Sam Moskowitz described the story as “more of a well-written plot synopsis for a novel than a short story.”

Miller participated in multiple collaborations. In the early 1930s, he wrote two stories with Walter Dennis and Paul McDemott: “The Red Spot of Jupiter” and “The Duel on the Asteroid.” These two stories were the only fiction Dennis and Dermott published, but Dennis was the co-editor, with Raymond A. Palmer, of The Comet, often cited as the first fanzine.

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Proven Wrong… Joyfully

Proven Wrong… Joyfully

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Image by kalhh from Pixabay

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

Everyone has a preference, right? Preferences show up all the time; in food, in friends, in partners, in art, films, and books. I, for example, like my food relatively spicy. My father will take it so damned hot any normal person will hallucinate pink elephants for hours. Not my preference. Sharing an Indian meal with him is sometimes a challenge. I prefer whiskey to most other alcoholic beverages, though I’ll happily have a rum and coke on occasion. I am a huge fan of surrealism in art, and find expressionism a little dull (controversial take alert). And when it comes to my books, I do not like first person perspective narratives, or LitRPGs, and I’m very particular about my humour.

Well, there are two books/series now that have absolutely slapped me in the face and called me a liar. And I’m here to admit I have (joyfully) been proven so very wrong.

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8 Things I Think I Think: March 2026

8 Things I Think I Think: March 2026

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1– BATTLEFRONT II IS PRETTY COOL

I’ve posted before that Fortnite is my kind of shooter. Fast-paced, high action games like Marvel Rivals, and Call of Duty, aren’t fun for me. And I pretty much just die. Fast and often. I’d rather go play a Solo RPG or something. I had been stuck since finishing Grim Dawn (which I wrote about here). I tried a couple games, including getting into Red Dead Redemption II (which I like, it just hasn’t grabbed me like LA Noire did). I false-started a half dozen games.

My son likes Star Wars: Battlefront II, which I briefly tried. Died repeatedly. Quit. But I decided to give it another go. It’s got a single player campaign mode, with multiple missions, as well as a few other solo options. But it was developed as a Multiplayer shooter, reminiscent of Team Fortress 2.

There was a huge controversy upon release in 2017, regarding micro transactions, and Electronic Arts stopped new content and support, in 2020. But the game has had a couple of resurgences and hit an all-time high in concurrent players last Summer. The game is what it is, and there’s a lot of content for the frequent $3.99 sale price.

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Forgotten Authors: F. Anstey

Forgotten Authors: F. Anstey

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F. Anstey

Thomas Anstey Guthrie was born in London on August 8, 1856. He attended King’s College School and studied at Trinity Hall in Cambridge. Over the course of his career, he used multiple pseudonyms, including Hope Bandoff, William Monarch Jones, and the one most associated with his genre work, F. Anstey. He had meant to publish under his first initial and middle name, but a typo rendered the initial F and he elected to keep it.

Anstey studied law and briefly practiced beginning in 1880, but gave it up to write, with numerous short humorous pieces appearing in Punch. He was also known for writing humorous novels, the most famous of which, Vice Versa, originally published in 1882, was adapted into a play by Anstey in 1883. He similarly adapted several other of his novels and short stories into plays, as well as adapting multiple of Molière’s works into English.

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