I have a habit of buying books — a compulsion, really. Older books, mostly, from book fairs and small used bookstores. Things that look unusual, and which, in the absence of an immediate reason on my part to read them immediately, often sit on my shelves for some time before I get around to them. So I don’t remember now exactly when and where I picked up a collection of Arthur D. Howden Smith’s Grey Maiden stories, only that it…
Bill Ward recently posted two articles on “hyperspeed reading,” the first a reaction to columnist Sarah Weinman’s claim of reading 462 books in a year, and the second taking a deeper look into reading speed. I’m not a slouch when it comes to the amount of books I read in a year. I finished eighty-one in 2008, but that makes me look positively lazy and incompetent compared to Weinman’s mid-four centuries claim. However, here’s my confession. I actually am a…
First things first: Happy Birthday, Clark Ashton Smith! The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008) Directed by Rob Cohen Starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li, Maria Bello, John Hannah, Michelle Yeoh, Luke Ford, Isabella Leong, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang On my own blog, I’ve done a set of weekly reviews surveying all the movies in Universal’s classic Mummy franchise. Just as I finished up this lengthy project, the most recent entry in the second Universal Mummy franchise, The Mummy: Tomb of…
By Rich Horton from Black Gate 2, copyright © 2001 by New Epoch Press. All rights Reserved. Part One It has become something of a cliche these days to note that popular fantasy seems to be concentrated in novels, and indeed in very large novels, or series of novels. A common acronym is FFT, for “Fat Fantasy Trilogy”. Probably the best selling current fantasy series is Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time, which now extends to 9 books, with the…
James Oliver Rigney, Jr. (1948-2007) By Leo Grin Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. When bestselling author Robert Jordan died on September 16, 2007, it formed the second loss in as many years of a fantasy writer notable for an extreme prolificacy not only of words but of fans (David Gemmell, author of nearly thirty popular books in the field, died July 28 last year, also coincidentally of heart trouble.) Both authors can be said to have…
by Rich Horton This year so far I have read a total of 65 novellas, 315 novelettes, and 1580 short stories. The novella and short story totals are up a great deal from last year. The novelette total is almost the same. Of the short stories, 227 were short shorts. (I consider a short-short to be anything under 1500 words.) The total length of the new short fiction I read last year was about 10.8 million words, versus a final…
A Look at Current Fantasy Books Copyright 2007 by New Epoch Press. All rights reserved. The Children of Húrin by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien Houghton Mifflin [313 pages, April 2007, $26.00] Reviewed by Ryan Harvey A common misconception about the writings of J.R.R. Tolkien often used by critics within the genre is that his work offers “reassurances,” a bucolic and cozy English country professor’s view of the world using those adorable Hobbits. Where this view comes from, I…