Marilyn Monroe at 100: Her Surprising Links to Cool Stuff
Believe it or not, Marilyn Monroe possessed some unguessed connections to Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard and Fritz Leiber.
Read MoreWeird Architecture Part II: Other Worlds and Times
Fantasy literature can give you new sensations and images. Most of the stories mentioned here have a hallucinatory weirdness and a brooding atmosphere. This comes from not only the description of these buildings but their nature.
Read MoreAtmosphere in Sword and Sorcery and Weird Fiction
Weird fiction is essentially about creating a mood. The mood in Lovecraft’s fiction is a kind of fear bordering on the sublime. Perhaps of all Sword and Sorcery authors C. L. Moore did strange atmosphere best.
Read MoreReview: Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser Omnibus
Reading “Ill Met in Lankhmar” by Fritz Leiber was a formative experience for me. I was impressed by Mignola’s covers. This was not the first time Mignola drew Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, however. He also worked on a comic series by Dark Horse about the Twain with Howard Chaykin.
Read MoreRobert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber: A Comparison
Robert E. Howard and Fritz Leiber were the two most important writers of Sword and Sorcery. Both created S&S for the pulps. However, in some ways, they were very different writers.
Read MoreWhy I Read Sword and Sorcery (And Why You Should Too)
There are various things about S&S that appealed to me but a big one is the outsider protagonists. Conan is often alone against a dangerous world. That feeling is something I understand. Another thing I like about it is the sense of adventure which is rare in modern society.
Read MoreA Fantastic Chapter for Conan and Sword-and-Sorcery
The late 1960s and early ‘70s were peak sword-and-sorcery. The Lancer Conan Saga was at its zenith of popularity, eventually selling by some estimates upwards of 10 million copies. And as the ‘60s gave way to the ‘70s a struggling magazine was about to get a signal boost from S&S’s mightiest hero.
Read MoreFritz Leiber -- Thirty Years Gone
Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of when Fritz Leiber departed this mortal coil. At the venerable age of eighty-one, he left behind him a truly great legacy in the fields of fantasy, science fiction and horror, not to mention the realms of literary criticism and role-playing games. When he died, Leiber had already influenced the likes of Ramsey Campbell, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, Terry Pratchett, Glen Cook, Tim Powers, Neil Gaiman and Michael Chabon, demonstrating the sheer breadth of what he had wrought.
Read MorePastiches: A Fistful of Thoughts
About four months ago, I wrote a blog entry regarding 'pastiches' in the De Campian sense. There were several interesting comments on that post. While I thought I laid out my basic attitude toward pastiches fairly well, there are certainly various angles that I didn't cover.
Read MoreFritz Leiber, Mike Mignola, and Me
I discovered Fritz Leiber, Mike Mignola, and sword-and-sorcery at the same time. I was a teenager in the suburbs of Houston when I picked up the collection Ill Met in Lankhmar by White Wolf Publishing at a Barnes and Noble. This was a double collection that includes Swords and Deviltry and Swords Against Death.
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