Search Results for: New Edge Sword

Slapdash Slapstick: Ron Goulart, January 13, 1933 – January 14, 2022

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Ron Goulart in 2009 Contrary to popular opinion, comic science fiction didn’t start and end with Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The humorous mode has a long and honorable history, exemplified by writers like Stanislaw Lem, Harry Harrison, R.A. Lafferty, Frederic Brown, Robert Sheckley… and Ron Goulart. Ron Goulart, who died on January 14th, a day after his eighty-ninth birthday, was an insanely prolific science fiction and mystery writer, especially in the 70’s and 80’s, when…

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Upon the Passing of Giants: Richard L. Tierney, August 7, 1936 – February 1, 2022

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Richard L. Tierney It was not long ago that I wrote an obituary here for Charles R. Saunders, the father of Sword & Soul and a man who showed the possibilities of sword & sorcery/heroic fantasy in non-European settings. Now, I must poor libations for another who took a genre’s flickering torch and in his own, and very different way, showed how to keep it burning. Richard Louis Tierney (7 August 1936 – 1 Feb 2022) was an American writer,…

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Erekosë and Me

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Michael Moorcock’s Erekosë saga is contained in three novels, and graphic novel, and a couple of short stories which were incorporated into his novels of Elric, Corum, and Hawkmoon.  I was first introduced to the character when I came across him in those interpolated adventures and I sought out his own novel, The Eternal Champion. When I first read it in the early 1980s it became one of my favorites of Moorcock’s novels.  At the time, I had some difficulty…

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John C. Hocking’s Conan Pastiches Emerald Lotus and “Black Starlight”

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John C. Hocking’s Conan Pastiches Conan and the Emerald Lotus by John C. Hocking emerged from Tor in 1995 (Ciruelo Cabral cover artist), and was reprinted in 1999 (with a Ken Kelly cover); both paperbacks are insanely expensive now (i.e. $500+ on Amazon, 2021 price). In 2019 Hocking released a 12-part serialized novella “Black Starlight” published in the back of the recent Conan the Barbarian comic (the comic portion was written by Jason Aaron), a direct sequel to “Emerald Lotus”…

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Robert E Howard: The Poet And The Ladies Of The Night

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Literary Swordsmen and Sorcerers: The Makers of Heroic Fantasy (Arkham House, 1976) and Dark Valley Destiny (Bluejay Books, 1983) Covers by Tim Kirk and Kevin Eugene Johnson Robert E. Howard and prostitutes is a complicated and fascinating subject. Not only is there a question of whether he visited the ladies of the night, there was also the issue of whether he was a virgin. In his REH biography, Dark Valley Destiny (1983) L. Sprague de Camp wrote, Some of Robert…

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Deep in Wildest Britain: Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

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I had the sense of recognition…here was something which I had known all my life, only I didn’t know it… English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams on discovering English folklore and folk music The late Robert Holdstock prefaced his 1984 novel, Mythago Wood with that quote, and that’s sort of how I feel about the book myself. Holdstock dug deeply into the idea of myth, how it might arise from a culture, and how, in turn, it might affect individuals. I have…

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Discovering Robert E. Howard – The Series

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Back in 2015, because I didn’t know any better, I thought I could reach out to Robert E. Howard experts and fans from around the world, and convince them to contribute essays about Robert E Howard, for a Black Gate series. Yeah, I know: “Who are you, Byrne? Why do you think you can pull this off?” Because I don’t have the common sense that God gave a rock. Also – I can’t even sing as well as a rock…

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A Deleted Excerpt from Immortal Muse, Revealed and Annotated by Stephen Leigh

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A Review of Immortal Muse & Interview with Stephen Leigh Complements this Excerpt.   Jeanne Hébuterne / Amedeo Modigliani with commentary by Stephen Leigh, the author   To the reader: This abandoned and unfinished long draft section may not make a great deal of sense unless you’ve already read IMMORTAL MUSE (DAW Books 2014), an alternate history fantasy novel about exactly what the title implies: a genuine muse who is immortal, who also happens to have been Perenelle Flamel (b….

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Fantasia 2021, Part LXVI: It’s A Summer Film!

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“School Radio to Major Tom” (“こちら放送室よりトム少佐へ”, “Kochira Housoushitsu yori Tom Shosa e”) is a bittersweet story that becomes a tearjerker by the end. A 10-minute short written and directed by Chisaka Takuya and set in 1989, it follows Eisuke (Tokuma Kudo), a teen who broadcasts and records his own science-fictional radio drama about a certain Major Tom every morning at his school; one day he comes in to find a girl (Chika Arakawa) who attends night classes has added a…

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When the Goddess Wakes by Howard Andrew Jones

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When comes my numbered day, I will meet it smiling. For I’ll have kept this oath. I shall use my arms to shield the weak. I shall use my lips to speak the truth, and my eyes to seek it. I shall use my hand to mete justice to high and to low, and I will weigh all things with heart and mind. Where I walk the laws will follow, for I am the sword of my people and the…

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