Search Results for: New Edge Sword

Who’s Afraid of The Fearsome Fang?

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The Fearsome Doctor Fang was published by TKO Studios in December 2018. The title only recently came to my attention on the recommendation of a fellow member of The Sax Rohmer Society. As soon as I saw the hero was named Nayland Kelly, I was sold. Writing new Yellow Peril titles in the 21st Century is understandably a tricky business. James Bond is a rare pulp-influenced franchise to have escaped unscathed despite Dr. No becoming the first of the series to reach…

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A Final Gift from Gardner: The Very Best of the Best: 35 Years of The Year’s Best Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois

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We lost Gardner Dozois, one of the greatest editors the SF field has ever seen, in May of last year. As devastating as that was, many of us took some solace in the fact that he had a handful of very exciting books still in the pipeline, and we’d have the opportunity to celebrate and remember him a few times yet. The first of those, the 35th and final volume in his legendary Year’s Best anthology series, was published last July, and the…

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IMHO: A Personal Look at Dystopian Fiction — Part One

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For the sake of this 2-part article, and not wanting to rely on memory alone, I’ve used a brief synopsis of each novel mentioned here, courtesy of Wikipedia. I haven’t read a dystopian novel in decades. Why? First, because I’ve read enough of them and after a while I got burned out. Second, because I started to see the direction in which our governments and our world were and are heading. Reality intruded upon fiction, and such novels began to…

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There’s a Lifetime of Reading in DAW Omnibus Volumes

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DAW Books was founded in 1971 by uber-editor Donald A. Wollheim after he left Ace Books. In the last five decades it’s published almost two thousand science fiction and fantasy novels (W. Michael Gear’s Pariah, released on May 14, is Daw Book #1823), and it has launched the careers of hundreds of writers, including C. J. Cherryh, Julie E. Czerneda, Patrick Rothfuss, Tad Williams, Kristen Britain, Melanie Rawn, Violette Malan, and Tanith Lee. Right. So there’s lots of reasons to…

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Disgust and Desire: An Interview with Anna Smith Spark

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It is not intuitive to seek beauty in art deemed grotesque/weird, but most authors who produce horror/fantasy actually are usually (a) serious about their craft, and (b) driven my strange muses.  This interview series engages contemporary authors & artists on the theme of “Art & Beauty in Weird/Fantasy Fiction.”  Previously we cornered weird fantasy authors like John Fultz, Janeen Webb, Aliya Whiteley, Richard Lee Byers, Sebastian Jones, Charles Gramlich, and Darrell Schweitzer. This one features the “Queen of Grimdark,” Anna Smith Spark. Anna Smith Spark is the author of the…

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The Storyteller’s Voice: Basil Rathbone Reads Edgar Allan Poe

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Basil Rathbone If I say the name Basil Rathbone, I have a very good chance of guessing exactly what you’ll think (if you’re old enough, that is — if you’re below a certain age, you may only think, “Who?”); ten will get you twenty you’ll think “Sherlock Holmes,” the character that Rathbone indelibly portrayed in fourteen films from 1939 to 1946, so successfully that for many people his name has become synonymous with the character. And if by some chance…

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Warhammer Chronicles: The Gotrek & Felix Novels by William King and Nathan Long are Back in Print

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I became a fan of Warhammer through Relic’s Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War series of computer games, and eventually became a huge fan of their audiobooks. But people I respect have been telling me for years that their fiction is worth reading. Howard Andrew Jones in particular recommended Clint Werner’s Brunner novels and Nathan Long’s Blackhearts volumes as fine examples of modern sword & sorcery. But the series I’ve heard the most about is the long-running Gotrek and Felix, which currently stands at…

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Hither Came Conan: Keith J. Taylor on “Red Nails”

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Welcome back to the latest installment of Hither Came Conan, where a leading Robert E. Howard expert examines one of the original Conan stories each week, highlighting what’s best. Keith Taylor talks about “Red Nails.” It was the last Conan story written by Howard, who was moving on from fantasy. Read on! “Red Nails” happens to be one of this writer’s favourite Conan stories, of that particular length, along with “People of the Black Circle” and “The Black Stranger” (which…

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Hither Came Conan: Steven H. Silver on “Man-Eaters of Zamboula”

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Why “Man-Eaters of Zamboula” Is the Best Conan Story of All Time, with the Possible  Exception of “Shadows of Zamboula,” which Is the Same Story, So It Really Is the Best of All Time “Man-Eaters of Zamboula” is, without a doubt, the best, and most quintessential story about Conan the Barbarian written by Robert E. Howard.  And since stories by other authors don’t count (with one exception noted below), that means that “Man-Eaters of Zamboula” is the absolute best Conan…

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Hither Came Conan: Scott Oden on “The Devil In Iron”

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There is a weird synchronicity at work, here, Gentle Readers.  Between the time when Bob Byrne solicited a few of us for this series and him handing out our story assignments, I wrote a Conan novella for Marvel (currently being serialized in the pages of the renewed Savage Sword of Conan, over a span of twelve issues).  Specifically, it is a sequel to Robert E. Howard’s “The Devil in Iron”.  Then, a few days later, I received my randomly selected…

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