Search Results for: tale covers

D.M. Ritzlin on the Ten Greatest Sword-and-Sorcery Stories by Robert E. Howard

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Covers by Brian LeBlanc, Sanjulian, and Margaret Brundage Dave Ritzlin is the mastermind behind DMR books, publishers of the Swords of Steel anthologies, The Infernal Bargain and Other Stories,  the 2020 anthology Renegade Swords, and many other volumes of adventure and weird fantasy. He’s also a fine blogger and Robert E. Howard enthusiast, and this month he produced one of the most interesting articles on REH I’ve read in many years — The Ten Greatest Sword-and-Sorcery Stories by Robert E. Howard….

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Sorcery, Foxkin, Giants, and the Return of Dabir & Asim: Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #45!

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Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #45 was released on an unsuspecting world on the second of August. Four works of fiction, one outstanding poem, plus artwork and audio. A great issue that you should check out! What have we got? This is what we’ve got: Fiction Contents Assailing the Garden of Pleasure, by Danial Ausema, with audio by Karen Bovenmeyer. The wounded apprentices of a corrupt teacher must gather what little power and skill they have to attempt to wrest the stolen…

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Fantasia 2020, Part XX: Cosmic Candy

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There is, or was, or might have been according to some, a movement in Greek cinema that started and flourished in the first half of the second decade of the twenty-first century called the Greek Weird Wave. This movement, if it existed — and Lanthimos himself is skeptical, while others say it’s a thing of the past — was perceived to be anchored by the films of Yorgos Lanthimos and Athina Rachel Tsangari, and characterised by surreal plot situations, precise…

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Future Treasures: Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

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You know what we need in these dark, pandemic filled days? A good superhero tale. Natalie Zina Walschots’s debut novel Hench looks like it could fit the bill. Kirkus says it’s “A fiendishly clever novel that fizzes with moxie and malice,” and in a starred review Publishers Weekly calls it a “hilarious peek behind the scenes of supervillains’ lairs… [with] gripping action and gut-wrenching body horror.” It arrives in hardcover on Tuesday. Here’s the description. The Boys meets My Year…

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Doors Open, Doors Closed: Alan Garner’s Elidor

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Elidor (Del Rey, July 1981). Cover by Laurence Schwinger One of the best things about starting a book is that you can never be sure exactly how you’re going to respond to it, and those responses can range all the way from hurl the damned thing across the room hatred to toe-curling bliss, with all of a million subtle shadings in between. Every once in a while, though, a book breaks through even the upper ranges of enjoyment and appreciation and…

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 19: Phoenix, Firelord, and the Imperial Guard!

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Welcome to Part 19 of my reread through the Uncanny X-Men. In this post I want to cover Uncanny X-Men #105-110, which finishes the first part of the Phoenix Saga, from their last fight with Eric the Red, the alien Shi’ar spy, to the fate of the M’Krann Crystal, which fully shows the full set of changes that Jean Grey has undergone when she resurrected herself in issue #101. This post begins though, with a side-trip to Iron Fist #11, which was also being written by…

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Recomplicated Realities: Philip K. Dick’s Eye In the Sky and Two Others

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Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick; First Edition: Ace, 1957. Cover art likely Ed Valigursky. (Click to enlarge) Eye in the Sky by Philip K. Dick Ace (255 pages, $.35, paperback, 1957) Cover art (likely) Ed Valigursky Solar Lottery by Philip K. Dick Ace (188 pages, $.35, paperback, 1955) Cover art unidentified Time Out of Joint by Philip K. Dick Lippincott (221 pages, $3.50, paperback, 1959) Cover art Arthur Hawkins I confess I’ve never warmed to Philip K….

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Charles Saunders, Father of Sword & Soul, July 1946 – May 2020

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“I started reading more about the history and culture of Africa. And I began to realise that in the SF and fantasy genre, blacks were, with only few exceptions, either left out or depicted in racist and stereotypic ways. I had a choice: I could either stop reading SF and fantasy, or try to do something about my dissatisfaction with it by writing my own stories and trying to get them published. I chose the latter course.” –Charles R. Saunders…

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Bigfoot, Uplifted Creatures, and the Largest Black Hole in the Universe: September/October Print SF Magazines

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Covers by Soo Lee, Maurizio Manzieri, and Bob Eggleton When Illinois went into lockdown in March, and retail stores and movie theatres closed, life changed pretty quick. I thought an indefinite nationwide lockdown might be the death knell for the print magazines I’d been reading for decades, not to mention my local bookstores and comic shops. And yeah, I felt I little shallow for being preoccupied with that while tens of thousands of people were dying. Nonetheless, I’m relieved to see that, with the…

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 18: Juggernaut and Magneto – For The Very First Time!

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Welcome to part 18 of my Quixotic reread of the X-Men, starting with issue #1 in 1963. We’re now in 1976 and I ended my last post partway through #101 because Phoenix’s introduction is the real climax of the last arc and it made sense to stop there. After Phoenix’ appearance and the hospital reunions, a new story arc starts, insofar as one can ever say a story starts or ends in Claremont’s braided narrative. In this post, I’m going…

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