“A Rose for Ecclesiastes” was a triumphant re-telling of the great pulp story. Mars as the home of a mysterious alien civilisation, a secret history of triumph and collapse, played out in a past age while Earthmen fought battles with swords and spears.
Read MoreAt the recent Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention I picked up a stack of copies of Magazine of Horror. For its 36-issue run between 1963 and 1971, editor Robert A.W. Lowndes published lots of reprints from Weird Tales, but some original fiction as well. I thought it would be interesting to take a closer look at the contents of the issues I acquired. I’ll begin with the earliest issue I have, No. 14 (Winter 1966/67).
Read MoreThe Chronicles of Amber doesn’t meet the strictest definition of a sword-and-sorcery tale. But anyone hesitating to try the series because of a pedantic view of the genre’s borders is missing out, because the original five books narrated by Corwin (starting with Nine Princes of Amber and ending with The Courts of Chaos) are some of the finest heroic fantasy fiction ever put to paper.
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