Who was Clifford Ball? Serious readers of sword and sorcery fiction may think they already have the answer. It goes like this. Clifford Ball was a reader and fan of Weird Tales in its 1930s heyday. As an early successor to Howard, his work has attracted a bit of scholarly mention since the 1970s. But Ball was a fantasy writer for only a brief portion of his life. Who was he beyond that?
Read MoreThe Thief of Forthe and Other Stories (2018), published by DMR Books, includes an engaging, thought-provoking story that should not be ignored by enthusiasts of dark fantasy or sword-and-sorcery: I am referring to “The Thief of Forthe” by Clifford Ball.
Read MoreDoom, death, and time weigh upon everything within “The Werewolf Howls,” written by Clifford Ball, which creates associations to the inhuman and the profane unknowable, the scapegoat otherness, the satanic animalism, the wizened barbarism.
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