Search Results for: tale covers

The Harp and The Blade: A Bard’s Adventures in Old France

Comments 5 comments

The first printing of John Meyers Meyers’ The Harp and the Blade was serialized in seven parts in the pulp magazine Argosy from June through early August of 1940. Although the Rudolph Belarski painting on the cover of the June 22 issue might suggest that The Harp and the Blade is a fantasy, it is not. It is instead a straight adventure story set in medieval France. What makes this story really interesting is its feeling of reality and the…

Read More Read More

Explore Jack Vance’s Rich and Dangerous Universe in The Gaean Reach from Pelgrane Press

Comments 8 comments

The Gaean Reach and The Gaean Reach Gazetteer (Pelgrane Press, 2014). Covers by Chris Huth The great Jack Vance doesn’t get a lot of love from role players. Despite his huge influence on the field (Gygax based the fundamental cast-and-forget spellcasting system of Dungeons and Dragons on the Vancian magic system the author developed for his Dying Earth tales, just as an example), there aren’t a lot of ways to use dice to explore the wonderful worlds Vance created. Twenty…

Read More Read More

The Controversy over Nebula Awards Showcase 55, edited by Catherynne M. Valente

Comments 6 comments

Nebula Awards Showcase 55 (SFWA, August 2021). Cover by Lauren Raye Snow I’m hearing some grousing about the latest Nebula Awards Showcase, edited by the distinguished Catherynne M. Valente. This is the 55th volume in the long-running series, and the second to be published directly by SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America. As is customary, it contains the complete Nebula award-winning stories, as selected by that august body, as well as a tasty selection of the other nominees, as…

Read More Read More

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords – The Barbarian Boom (Part 1)

Comments 8 comments

Hawk the Slayer (1980) The Eighties Barbarian Boom didn’t start with Conan the Barbarian (1982), though its long pre-release hype train certainly primed the pump. In truth, the market was ripe for such films, and by mid-1981, a number of other sword-and-sorcery movies were in production or pre-production. The genre had been bubbling its way up in other mass media throughout the Seventies, Dungeons & Dragons co-designer Gary Gygax had come to Hollywood talking it up, and the largely heroic…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Activation Degradation by Marina J. Lostetter

Comments 0 Comment

Activation Degradation (Harper Voyager, September 2021) Marina J. Lostetter is the author of the acclaimed Noumenon space opera series, and the fantasy novel The Helm of Midnight, released just this past April. She doesn’t appear interested in just soaking up the glory of those accomplishments, however — her next novel (and her second this year) arrived in September. Activation Degradation features a spunky robot hero in a fast-paced tale of alien invasion in high orbit over Jupiter, one with plenty…

Read More Read More

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

Comments 3 comments

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…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: High Tension by Dean Ing

Comments 0 Comment

High Tension (Ace Books, 1982). Cover by Walter Velez Dean Ing was a staple in James Baen’s paperback magazines of the late seventies, Destinies (eleven volumes from Ace Books, 1978-1981) and the copycat series Baen kicked off after he left Ace to found Baen Books, Far Frontiers (seven issues, 1985-86). I also saw Ing’s name semi-regularly in Analog and OMNI around the same time. He produced four collections: Anasazi (1980), a set of three connected tales of first contact with…

Read More Read More

Deep in Wildest Britain: Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

Comments 4 comments

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…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Days of the Dead – Season Greetings from Our Family to Yours

Comments 0 Comment

That time of year has once again rolled around. “The Season” is officially over. Black Gate photog Chris Z has thrown a tarp over the Hummer and sent his kilt to the dry cleaners. We’ve emptied the final airplane-sized bottles of Fireball, and filed our last expense report with BG’s financial fun police. Because on the weekend before Thanksgiving we attended the final convention of our annual show circuit, Days of the Dead. It certainly doesn’t feel like nearly ten…

Read More Read More

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords – 1981: The Old Order Changeth

Comments 10 comments

Excalibur (Warner Bros, 1981) 1981 was a watershed year in fantasy films. The success of Star Wars had made it possible to fund and produce large-scale SF and fantasy movies, but it also heralded a change in the way such movies were made, placing high-quality (and thus expensive) special effects front and center. Prior to Star Wars, special effects in fantasy films were almost invariably low-budget and cheesy, reflecting movie producers’ almost invariable belief that such films appealed only to…

Read More Read More