Search Results for: New Edge Sword

Hither Came Conan: Bobby Derie – “The Phoenix on the Sword”

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Our Hither Came Conan series gets well and truly underway this week with Bobby Derie presenting the case for “The Phoenix on the Sword.” Grab your loin cloth and tulwar (or zhaibar knife, if you prefer…)  and tread upon some jeweled thrones! “Know, oh prince…” The Texas pulpster sat at his typewriter, pounding away at the keys, talking the story out loud as he typed. The long novella of King Kull, “By This Axe I Rule!” written some years earlier…

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Worldbuilding Once and Future Fake News: Not Really A Review of Singer & Brooking’s LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media

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What if I told you that the Sack of Limoges in Froissart… never happened? Well, OK, you’d look at me blankly. After a moment you might ask, “I’ve never heard of Froissart. Where is that? French Canada?” I’ve been reading LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media by Singer and Brooking. It describes the emerging world of Internet “news” where news passes from person-to-person on social media, no source is uncontroversially trustworthy, and where both information warriors and click-bait farmers are uninterested in…

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New Treasures: The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018 edited by Paula Guran

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We’ve just about wrapped up the Best of the Year season, the summer/fall period when eight publishers and a dozen editors collaborate to produce ten volumes gathering the best short science fiction, fantasy, and horror of the year. We’ve had eight so far, from Neil Clarke, Jonathan Strahan, Gardner Dozois, Rich Horton, David Afsharirad, N.K. Jemisin and John Joseph Adams, and others. But we’re not done yet — and in fact, this week two of my favorites landed on the…

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Birthday Reviews: Nancy Holder’s “Prayer of the Knight of the Sword”

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Nancy Holder was born on August 29, 1953. Holder has won the Bram Stoker Award five times. She won the Best Short Story award for “Lady Madonna,” “I Hear the Mermaids Singing,” and “Café Endless: Spring Rain.” She won for Best Novel for Dead in the Water and for Best Young-Adult Novel for The Screaming Season. Her story “”Prayer of the Knight of the Sword” was published in the 1995 anthology Excalibur, edited by Edward E. Kramer, Richard Gilliam, and…

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Into the 80s: A Look at Some of the Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery films of the Decade

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After a comment I made on John O’Neill’s Facebook post regarding John Searle’s July 25 Black Gate article Conjure Puberty: The Sword and the Sorcerer (from 1982), Mister O’Neill asked me to do an article on some of the other films of that decade. Naturally, I said I would be happy to. I decided to write about only a handful of the films I’ve seen: my impressions and opinions are based solely on what I remember about them, having decided not to…

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Conjure Puberty: The Sword and The Sorcerer (1982)

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The Sword and The Sorcerer (1982) Dir. Albert Pyun Starring: Lee Horsely, Kathleen Beller, Simon McCorkindale, et al. In case it needs to be said — spoilers. Okay. Let’s go… The Sword and the Sorcerer is the cinematic equivalent of the first homebrew table-top gaming campaign run by a 13 year old. I know this because I turned 13 in 1982. I also know this because I likely ran my first homebrew table-top game that year. The step from 12…

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New Treasures: The Sacred Hunt Duology by Michelle West

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OK, this isn’t strictly a New Treasure, since it came out in 2016. But I discovered it for the first time while browsing the science fiction shelves at Barnes & Noble last week, so what the heck. It’s new to me. Michelle West (who also writes as Michelle Sagara) is a Canadian writer with some three dozen novels to her credit, including the 6-volume Sun Sword series (which Derek Kunsken reviewed for us here) and the 7-volume House War, both…

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In Search of a new Weird Tales: An Interview with Joseph Goodman, Howard Andrew Jones, and the Talking Skull!

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Recently Goodman Games announced a Kickstarter campaign to fund the launch of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, a magazine of all-new swords & sorcery fiction in the classic pulp style. The first issue is a delight for Black Gate readers, with tales from popular BG contributors James Enge, John C. Hocking, Howard Andrew Jones, Chris Willrich, Bill Ward, and others. And best of all, Goodman has invited Howard Andrew Jones on board as editor, guaranteeing a top-notch product. The spectacular success of the…

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New Treasures: Swords Against Darkness edited by Paula Guran

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I’ve been anticipating Paula Guran’s monumental Swords Against Darkness anthology for over a year, ever since word started to leak out about the massive amount of research she was doing to make her selections (including reading every issue of Black Gate). The book was finally released this summer, but it wasn’t until last weekend that I was able to settle in with it. And so far, it’s been a delight. It’s divided into three sections: Forging and Shaping, covering the…

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Support an Exciting New Magazine of Sword & Sorcery: Tales From the Magician’s Skull

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Here’s the best news I’ve heard all month: Goodman Games, publisher of the excellent Dungeon Crawl Classics line of old-school RPG adventures, has launched a brand new magazine of Sword & Sorcery, Tales From the Magician’s Skull. The editor chosen to helm this groundbreaking project? None other than our very own Howard Andrew Jones. Here’s Howard with the scoop. A gong shivers… The mists part to reveal a grisly object lying upon a mound of rubble, a browned and ancient…

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