Search Results for: tale covers

Cinema of Swords: Swords in the Arthouse

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Historical adventure and fantasy films tend to be straightforward genre pictures long on plot and action and short on deep themes and introspection, which is okay, you can’t have everything. Or can you? Some ambitious filmmakers want it all, and are willing to risk losing an audience who expects simple action and adventure by giving them ideas to think about or visuals that are striking but hard to parse. Films with such vaulting ambitions often fall into the category of…

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Robot Avatars, Criminal Combines, and a Sisterhood of Space Pilots: July-August 2024 Print SF Magazines

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July-August 2024 issues of Asimov’s Science Fiction and Analog Science Fiction & Fact. Cover art by John Sumrow (for “Sisters of the Flare”) and Shutterstock Might as well get the bad news out of the way up front. There’s still no new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but we hope for better news next month. Unfortunately, that’s the same thing we said two months ago, and two months before that. We’re now 2/3rds of the way…

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Vintage Treasures: The Doom That Came to Sarnath by H.P. Lovecraft

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The Doom That Came to Sarnath (Ballantine Books, November 1976). Cover by Murray Tinkelman H.P. Lovecraft, creator of the Cthulhu Mythos, was one of the greatest horror writers of the 20th Century. But horror wasn’t all he produced, as editor Lin Carter adroitly pointed out in the introduction to The Doom That Came to Sarnath. Those readers who know only the Cthulhu Mythos stories, know only a single side of Lovecraft… the Cthulhu Mythos, while completely his own invention, was…

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In the tradition of Conan: The Kyrik and Kothar Novels by Gardner F. Fox

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The Kyrik novels by Gardner F. Fox (Leisure Books, 1975-1976) I’m getting ready to embark on a series of posts about Philip Jose Farmer, but got distracted looking through my shelves and decided to throw in a post about the Sword & Sorcery work of Gardner F. Fox, who I mentioned here a while back for his two book S&P series set on the planet Llarn. While my small hometown library didn’t have anything by Robert E. Howard, they had…

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Beating Heart & Battle Axes – New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine Forges a Book

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New Edge Sword and Sorcery Magazine, championed by Oliver Brackenbury, has emerged over the last few years to provide a market with “love for the classics, and an inclusive, boundary-pushing approach to storytelling.”  Black Gate has featured the crowdfunding for and reviews of the initial volumes (link).  Today we highlight a crowdfunding endeavor that is in progress now, set to end on July 20th: a collection of six stories called Beating Hearts & Battle-Axes. Starting with this new anthology, Oliver…

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Vintage Treasures: Frontera by Lewis Shiner

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Frontera (Baen Books, August 1984). Cover by Vincent Di Fate I first discovered Lewis Shiner in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthologies, where he was a regular, and one of my favorite contributors. His first published story, “Tinker’s Damn,” appeared in the fifth issue of Charles Ryan’s Galileo magazine in October 1977, and he followed that with dozens more all through the 80s and 90s in places likes The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Twilight Zone Magazine, Omni,…

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Lord of a Shattered Land and The Doom of Odin: Howard Andrew Jones and Scott Oden Deliver High-octane, Euro-Mediterranean Adventure

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I just finished two Euro-Mediterranean-inspired fantasy novels, and, by chance, both feature dragons on their beautiful covers. This post showcases both. Scott Oden’s The Doom of Oden wraps up a trilogy (Grimnir Series) and Howard Andrew Jones’ Lord of a Shattered Land begins a five-book series (Hanuvar Chronicles). Each offers anti-Roman myths/legends, Oden’s Grimnir overtly calls out Rome (and then introduces loads of Nordic fantasy) and HAJ’s Hanuvar’s primary antagonist is the Dervan Empire (obviously inspired by the Roman Empire)….

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New Treasures: Ragged Maps by Ian R. MacLeod

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Ragged Maps (Subterranean Press, September 15, 2023). Cover by Dominic Harman Ian R. MacLeod’s novels include The Light Ages (2003) and sequel The House of Storms (2005), but his greatest acclaim has come from his short fiction. He’s produced no less than seven short story collections since 1996, including Voyages by Starlight (1996), Frost on Glass (2015), and the World Fantasy Award nominee Breathmoss and Other Exhalations (2004). His latest collection, Ragged Maps, was released by Subterranean Press in a…

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Disembodied Heads, War Robots, and Crime Hives: May-June 2024 Print SF Magazines

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May-June 2024 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Covers by Kurt Huggins (for “Uncle Roy’s Computer Repairs and Used Robot Parts”) and Shutterstock. There’s no sign of the new issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction this month, which is a little concerning. Distribution issues caused the January/February issue to be renamed “Winter 2024” and ship significantly late, but now that spring and gone and summer is upon us, I’d hoped to at least…

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Vintage Treasures: Cave of Stars by George Zebrowski

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Cave of Stars (Eos/HarperCollins, December 2000). Cover art by Bob Eggleton I don’t know much about George Zebrowski. I probably should. According to ISFDB he’s written more than a dozen science fiction novels, including the John W. Campbell Award-winner Brute Orbits (1999). He’s edited over a dozen anthologies, including four Synergy volumes and three Nebula Awards collections, and was the editor of The Bulletin of the Science Fiction Writers of America from 1970-74, and again from 1983-90. With his domestic…

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