Search Results for: tale covers

Robert Adams was a Master of Narrative Drive

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The first ten novels in the Horseclans series by Robert Adams (Signet/ New American Library editions, 1979-1983). Cover art by Ken Kelly Franklin Robert Adams (1933 – 1990) only used his middle and last name on his books. He wrote twenty-six of them, in three different series, and edited nearly a dozen more. His first and most famous series is called Horseclans. It’s set on a post-apocalyptic Earth, after a nuclear war, and begins on America’s great plains with tribal…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Arthur and Out

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Tristan & Isolde (20th Century Fox, 2006) Greetings, friends, and welcome to the last Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords article, at least for a while. I’ve enjoyed hanging out with you here on the regular, but circumstances have changed for Your Cheerful Editor, and my writing output must adapt to accommodate them. For a good while, I had reached an equilibrium in my writing, balanced between work for the day-job at Larian Studios, making progress on my nine-volume Musketeers Cycle of…

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Chess in Sword & Planet Fiction, Part II: Dray Prescot and Gor

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Dray Prescot 20: A Sword for Kregen (DAW, August 1979) and Players of Gor (DAW Books, March 1984). Covers by Richard Hescox and Ken Kelly My second exposure to Sword & Planet chess came in one of my favorite Sword & Planet books, which I’ve mentioned in this series already a couple of times. This was A Sword for Kregen, by Alan Burt Akers (aka Ken Bulmer). In this book, Dray Prescot, our earthman hero, becomes a living Jikaida piece…

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EC Comics is back

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Cruel Universe #1 and Epitaphs from the Abyss #1. Covers by Greg Smallwood and Andrea Sorrentino EC Comics is back. In cooperation with Oni Press, the classic imprint that brought us Tales from the Crypt, The Haunt of Fear, Weird Science, Weird Fantasy, and other titles is back. The two new titles are called Cruel Universe and Epitaphs from the Abyss. Cruel Universe #1 features four stories, “The Champion,” “Solid Shift,” “Drink Up,” and “Priceless.” The stories are each written…

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I Read a Year of Robert E. Howard Pastiche So You Don’t Have To (But you really might want to)

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Three installments in The Heroic Legends Series from Titan Books: Conan: The Shadow of Vengeance by Scott Oden (January 30, 2024), Solomon Kane: The Hound of God by Jonathan Maberry (November 28, 2023), and Bran Mak Morn: Red Waves of Slaughter by Steven L. Shrewsbury (March 26, 2024) Pastiche — basically, licensed fan-fic — has been around as long as there has been fiction, but certain properties “lock in” on it; becoming sometimes so richly filled with authorized sequels, continuations…

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Booyah! Quatro-Decadal Review, an Introduction to the World as it was in November 1999

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Some of the print SF magazines of November 1999: The 50th Anniversary issue ofThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, and the October-November doubleissue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Covers by Chesley Bonestell, Kim Poor, and Jim Burns With the ‘69, ‘79 and ‘89 magazines behind me I prepare to delve into 1999. On the one hand, my memories of 30-year-old-me (30 YOM), while closer in time than 20YOM, are perhaps a bit hazier because unlike 20 YOM, 30 YOM…

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A to Z Reviews: “The Curious Child & the Covetous Dragon,” by Sara L. Uckelman

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Over the past several years, I’ve embarked on a series of year-long review cycles at Black Gate. In 2018, I reviewed a story-a-day to coincide with an author whose birthday it was. In 2022, I selected stories completely at random from my collection to review. In both of those cases, the projects served to find forgotten and minor works of science fiction that spanned a range of years. They also served to make me read stories and authors who I…

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Dragons and Wolveses

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Wolfhound (Russia, 2006) The Barbarian Boom of the ‘80s was the first normalization of fantasy as a mainstream genre for the movies. As the boom faded in the ‘90s (Xena notwithstanding), it seemed as if fantasy film had been just another passing phase. But then, in the early 2000s, along came The Lord of the Rings and Pirates of the Caribbean series: the Second Normalization of Fantasy Film had arrived, and as we’re still living with it in 2024, it…

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Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery – Cover Artist Perspectives and Campaign

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Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, starting with Micheal Harrington’s 2022 interview with Oliver Brackenbury (author, screenwriter, podcaster, and editor of NESS), through 2023 with NESS first two magazine releases (also Mele’s review of #1), and NESS’s first book “Beating Heart and Battle Axes (July of 2024).  Now, as of Sept 19th, NESS continues this epic trend of presenting contemporary adventure fiction in fun ways with their second crowdfunded book DOUBLE-EDGED…

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The End of Time and Me: Michael Moorcock’s Dancers at the End of Time

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The Dancers at the End of Time trilogy: An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands, and The End of All Songs (Avon Books, September and November 1977, and June 1978). Cover art by Stanislaw Fernandes When I discovered Moorcock in the early 1980s, I read his trilogy Dancers at the End of Time and the associated novel A Messiah at the End of Time. I remember enjoying the trilogy, though I have only vague memories of the stand-alone novel. Back in…

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