Karl Edward Wagner Day Coming This October!
Will Oliver decided to get like-minded Karl Edward Wagner fans together in Knoxville this coming October to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Karl’s mortality. Read on to find out more.
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 MoreThe Fiftieth Anniversary of DAW Books
Today marked the anniversary of the passing of Donald A. Wollheim. Today also marks—perhaps exactly, perhaps within a few weeks at most—the founding of DAW Books by Wollheim in 1971. Throughout the 1970s and well into the 1980s, DAW Books kept the pulp aesthetic alive, publishing far more sword-and-sorcery and sword-and-planet than its competitors.
Read MoreLee Brown Coye -- Forty Years Gone
Lee Brown Coye was a truly unique artist, contributing covers to the original run of Weird Tales and, later, Arkham House and Carcosa.
Read MoreChris Hale: A Fallen Warrior
Chris Hale was a student of sword-and-sorcery. He left this world far too soon, but he achieved notable things in the field of Howard Studies/S&S/Heroic Fantasy. I’m going to look at those achievements in this blog post.
Read MoreRenegade Swords II to Include Stories by Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner
With last year’s Renegade Swords a rousing success for DMR Books, it’s only natural to follow it up with a second volume.
Read MoreCarcosa: Short-Lived, But Legendary
Carcosa, the imprint founded by Karl Edward Wagner with partners David Drake and Jim Groce, came to be partially out of the concern that Arkham House would close shop after the death of August Derleth in 1971. Thankfully, that didn’t happen. But for me, the four Carcosa volumes are Arkham House books by extension. They are design-executed as traditional AH titles and are absolutely essential books in the macabre-fantasy genres.
Read MoreKarl Edward Wagner: Born For Blood and Darkness
Karl Edward Wagner was born on this date seventy-five years ago. By the age of thirty, he was making waves in both the genres of Horror and of Sword and Sorcery. At the time of his untimely death in 1994, he was already a legend.
Read MoreOne Ring Rules Them All: A Comparison of Karl Edward Wagner’s Bloodstone and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
Karl Edward Wagner (1945-1994) began a draft of Bloodstone and its immortal protagonist Kane in 1960, while just a freshman in high school. Wagner finished the draft of Bloodstone in 1970 while enrolled as a PhD student in neurobiology. By then, J.R.R. Tolkien was everywhere—including, as I argue, in the published version of Wagner’s 1975 novel.
Read MoreThe Compatibility of Dwassllir’s Romanticism with Kane’s Pragmatism: Thoughts on Karl Edward Wagner’s “Two Suns Setting”
“Two Suns Setting” has held a grip on me for a couple of decades now. The dichotomy of the city of Carsultyal, that being progression built on the conservation of cultural fundamentals, is expressed throughout the story in the relationship between Kane and Dwassllir. Furthermore, it is the harmony of this duplexity that has drawn me to “Two Suns Setting” from the start. But why?
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