Quick Reviews: Swordsmen and Supermen
“A most unusual volume of swashbuckling high adventure stories with a heavy accent on the fantastic” promises the back cover.
Read MoreAnnouncement: Summer Sale
For one week only, everything (yes, everything) in our store is on sale!
Read MoreForefathers of Sword and Sorcery: H. Rider Haggard
Haggard stands at the fountainhead and nexus of what I call "exotic adventure fiction." Such fiction moves beyond the sort of stories told up until that time--adventures of pirates, cowboys, swashbucklers, explorers and whatnot-- and adds something extra, something over the top, something truly exotic.
Read MoreMerritt's "The Moon Pool" Turns 100
Today marks the centennial of the first publication of A. Merritt's novelette, "The Moon Pool." Such a small thing--only about twenty thousand words--but one that has had an extraordinarily outsized impact in the century since.
Read MoreStephen Fabian and Robert E. Howard: Part Three
Robert E. Howard died on this date in 1936. Thinking about that tragic day eventually reminded me that I'd never followed up on my first two looks at Stephen Fabian's illustrations of Howard's works. Today, I'll attempt to make the argument that Fabian should be considered the greatest illustrator of Robert E. Howard's characters and yarns.
Read MoreQuick Reviews: The Snake-Man's Bane
Fortunately, we presently have a few writers who understand what REH-inspired sword and sorcery is supposed to be: aggressive, bloody, virile, menacing. Howie Bentley is one of the best, if not the best, writers of this style today.
Read MoreThe DMRtian Chronicles - 4/29/2018
Items of interest from around the web.
Read MoreOut of Space and Time by Clark Ashton Smith
Clark Ashton Smith, of course, was one of the mainstay writers of the old Weird Tales, with Howard and Lovecraft. Smith was chiefly a poet, and also a sculptor, but after a breakdown in health, during the Depression, he wrote more than a hundred bizarre short stories (between 1929 and 1934) to pay his bills. Like Howard, he contributed to Lovecraft’s famous Mythos.
Read MoreForefathers of Sword and Sorcery: Harold Lamb
Harold Lamb died on this date in 1962. He left behind a staggering amount of quality fiction and nonfiction. He was one of the very top contributors to one of the premiere pulps, Adventure, and went on to become a popular and award-winning historian.
Read MoreWho "Made" Conan and Robert E. Howard? -- Part One
'lin carter and l sprague de camp finished unfinished works of howard and made full stories out of them as well.they are worth having as if it was not for them there would be no conan movie no conan comics and would not be ass [sic] popular as it is today[.]"
-- Quoted verbatim from a proud member of the subliterati on Facebook circa late 2017
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