The aesthetics of architecture is interesting. The design, the shape, the decoration of buildings can produce strong feelings in a person. This is true even in fictional buildings. Perhaps more so in Sword and Sorcery and Weird Fiction which is overrun with strange, often decaying structures.
Read MoreEdgar Allan Poe is probably the most influential American writer of all time. Ernest Hemingway may have pointed to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn as the progenitor of American literature, but with all due respect to both Twain and Hemingway, no American had the influence on not only American literature but world literature that Poe did.
Read MoreThe one-hundredth and seventy-fifth anniversary of the day when—in the lonesome October—Edgar Allan Poe mysteriously passed beyond this mortal coil, came and went a few days ago. The anniversary of such a literary titan shall not go unrecognized, albeit belatedly.
Read MoreThere are few terrors more gripping than the prospect of being buried alive. Edgar Allan Poe, the master of the horror tale, wrote a number of stories about that horrific yet fascinating topic.
Read MoreHow about we celebrate Autumn and the descent of Winter with some spooky folklore, stories, books, and movies? Please permit me here to share with you my personal review of a movie I think is worth your time, particularly in the jack-o’-lantern hours of October: Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace (1963), starring Vincent Price, based on and inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft.
Read MoreEdgar Allan Poe’s writings have long been a perennial subject of adaptation to other media. But there is one largely forgotten medium that even devoted followers of Poe adaptations rarely encounter anymore: radio drama. And, though few realize it today, it’s here that some of the finest of all Poe adaptations have been created.
Read MoreEdgar Allan Poe’s fantasque piece of fiction “The Island of the Fay” illustrates profoundly the importance, the puissance, and the enthralling effect of the Fantasy genre in literature, which in this day and vile age is a genre that has been grossly misrepresented, mishandled, and victimized by the loathsome banality of modernism and corporate agents of priggish censorship.
Read MoreHow could understanding the differences between Romanticism and Dark Romanticism be of any benefit to the readers of Sword and Sorcery? Fantasy birthed Sword and Sorcery, but not alone, for it was Romanticism that spawned Dark Romanticism, and it also had a hand in the conception of Sword and Sorcery. These four genres might not appear to be related, but they absolutely do branch together, and understanding the similarities and differences between them can help pulp-readers better appreciate the legitimate literary value of works in these genres.
Read MoreIn most of Smith’s writings, there is a brooding, a rapturous fixation on doom, destruction, decay, and destroyed things; there is also a relationship between the beautiful and the dead or doomed.
Read MoreI was on social media a little bit ago and saw somebody wishing everyone a ‘Happy Hollow Earth Day!’. A quick online search didn’t turn up anything definitive, which means nothing. The whole thing could’ve been shadow-banned by Those Who Dwell in the Valley of Silicon with none the wiser. All I can say is, if there isn’t such a thing, there should be.
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