Today marks the one hundred and fifteenth birthday of Catherine Lucille “C.L.” Moore. Hailed as a ‘Grandmaster of Fantasy’ and also ‘The Queen of Sword and Sorcery’ by some, Moore contributed mightily to Weird Tales in the 1930s and then blazed trails in the sci-fi realm with her husband, Henry Kuttner.
Read MoreH.P. Lovecraft was born on August 20, 1890. By 1925, his impact on horror literature was seismic. Today, the ‘Lovecraftian lens’ is the paradigm through which most horror fiction is viewed—and written—today. Heroic fantasy follows many of the same rules.
Read MoreWeird 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 MoreTheosophy arose in the late 1800s and quickly spread throughout the Western world. Its doctrines and mythology fascinated everyone from political revolutionaries to pulp authors. Its influence is still felt today, after nearly one hundred and fifty years.
Read MoreThe cosmic wheels have whirled and turned once more. We yet again find ourselves celebrating Klarkash-Ton Day. Raise a glass of Atlantean vintage—or the closest equivalent—to the memory of Clark Ashton Smith and his almost-avatar, Klarkash-Ton.
Read MoreH.P. Lovecraft, if he was still among the living, would have turned one hundred and thirty-four today. In honor of that, I'll take a quick look at an artistic tribute to HPL's The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath.
Read MoreDistrust of technological and scientific progress, of Modernism, of Realism, et cetera: that sort of pessimism inhabits H. P. Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model,” the storyline of which expresses the wickedness engineered in the nightmare that it envisions, a world haunted by atrocities and fanaticism.
Read MoreClark Ashton Smith was a pioneer of the S&S genre. His “The Tale of Satampra Zeiros” was the first sword-and-sorcery story he ever wrote. It is also, possibly, the most influential tale he told within that genre.
Read MoreRobert E. Howard loved food. Thus, it is no surprise that he loved Thanksgiving dinner. We take a look at all that in this DMR Books blog entry.
Read MoreSamhain Sorceries author Matthew Pungitore reviews Dagon, a movie that was directed by Stuart Gordon and inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft.
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