Search Results for: How to put the sword in sword and sorcery

Howard Andrew Jones, July 19, 1968 – January 16, 2025

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Howard Andrew Jones is dead. It’s hard to write those words. Howard has been a huge part of my personal and professional life since 2002, when I opened a submission to Black Gate magazine and found a long, rambling, and extremely enthusiastic cover letter from him, expressing his delight at finding a quality magazine devoted to heroic fantasy. The letter ended with “I want in, bad,” and was attached to a terrific tale featuring two adventurers named Dabir and Asim….

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The Dreams in Gary’s Basement: Gary Gygax and the Creation of Dungeons & Dragons

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On the eve of Gary’s Gygax’s birthday, July 26, 2019, I was in sunny California getting ready to be interviewed by the Dorks of Yore for their documentary, The Dreams in Gary’s Basement: Gary Gygax and the Creation of Dungeons & Dragons. The interview touched on my experiences working with Gary from 2005–2008, a time that I will always cherish. Gary was so generous with me — a friend and a mentor who not only showed me the ropes, but…

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A Game of Kings and Things:TSR’s Divine Right

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In the summer of 1981, my friend Alex R. had moved into a big, new house not far from the Staten Island neighborhood where most of my other friends lived. As his parents were rarely home and summer was beginning, we spent all our days and most nights there, watching movies and playing D&D. Things changed significantly when George K. showed up one day with a copy of TSR’s fantasy wargame, Divine Right. Designed by brothers Glenn and Kenneth Rahman,…

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Conan Unchained!, The Keep on the Borderlands, and the 50th Anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons

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Advanced Dungeons & Dragons CB1: Conan Unchained! by David “Zeb” Cook (TSR, 1984) Before TSR created the Conan Role Playing Game with its own rules and conventions, they released two Conan adventure modules for use with AD&D, but with a few interesting rules additions, including Fear Checks, Luck Points, and more lenient Healing rules. This adventure was written by the legendary David “Zeb” Cook and illustrated by the incredibly talented Jeff Butler. As I’ve had the pleasure of meeting both…

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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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Of Artistry, Addiction, and Self-discovery: Forthcoming Memoir of Fantasy Artist Tom Barber

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The art of Tom Barber: Amazing Science Fiction, March 1976, and the first issue of the paperback version of Weird Tales, edited by Lin Carter (Zebra Books, December 1980) The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. –Kurt Vonnegut Tom Barber was working in a commercial art…

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Howard Andrew Jones’ Lord of a Shattered Land and the Serious Business of Swords, Sorcery, and Comedy

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Lord of a Shattered Land (Baen Books, August 1, 2023). Cover by Dave Seeley At about the halfway mark in Howard Andrew Jones’s Lord of a Shattered Land, the excellent opening volume of The Chronicles of Hanuvar, the author shifts gears. “Against the run of play,” he opts for comedy. Lord of a Shattered Land is set up in episodic form, such that each of the chapters can be read independently. The first eight unfold through tightly plotted escapades that…

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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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Besties: The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by R.F. Kuang

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The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 (Mariner Books, October 17, 2023) Perhaps the most overused title for short story anthologies beings with “Best of.” In genre fiction, the heavyweight (in terms of both size and breadth of coverage) was the Gardner Dozois-edited The Year’s Best Science Fiction Stories that ran for 35 years until his death in 2018. And there are a whole slew of similar “Best of’s” for horror, dark fantasy, speculative fiction, you name a subgenre…

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Retro Review: Fantastic, August and October, 1972

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Fantastic magazine, edited by Ted White. August and October 1972. Covers by Jeff Jones and Mike Hinge My Retro Reviews of Amazing have concentrated on the Goldsmith/Lalli years, but I recently read this pair of issues from Ted White’s era, which extended from 1969 to 1979. As a youngster, I started reading Amazing in late 1974, so right in the middle of White’s editorship. These two issues, then, date a bit earlier than my first encounter with Amazing. I bought them…

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