Today is the eighty-eighth birthday of artist Stephen E. Fabian. He was arguably the greatest artist in the SFF small press scene during the '70s and '80s. He also did an imposing amount of work for TSR, especially for their Ravenloft setting. In 2006, he won the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement. I attended and got to shake his hand. I'd been a fan since boyhood.
Read MoreWe all love vampires. There is something deeply attractive to us about seductive, bloodsucking creatures of the night that has made them a staple in fantasy and horror culture. Perhaps it is the allure of immortality, or the dark romanticism of biting someone on the neck that draws us to them. From the folklore of the dark ages, to modern Hollywood icons such as Count Dracula and the like, we as humans somehow identify with the Nosferatu, and they have become a common theme that pops up quite often in literature, film, and other forms of modern art and entertainment.
Read MoreThe noted and influential sword & sorcery author, Keith Taylor, turned seventy-one yesterday. Keith was among the cohort of S&S authors that exploded in the 1970s which included Adrian Cole, Charles R. Saunders, Michael Shea, Richard Tierney and Karl Edward Wagner. Other than a period of serious illness, Taylor has worked fairly steadily through the decades, writing S&S and related fantasy, as well as blogging at various sites.
Read MoreSeabury Quinn was the most popular author amongst the readers of Weird Tales magazine during its original run. Robert E. Howard called Quinn "the king-favorite of Weird Tales fans," and with good reason. Quinn's stories--usually featuring his occult detective, Jules de Grandin--appeared in about every other issue of WT for years and years. Weird Tales scholar, Terence Hanley, puts the count at one hundred forty-six tales over roughly thirty years. Quinn was the flagship author of 'The Unique Magazine,' overshadowing both REH and Lovecraft and fighting off competition from upstarts like Ed Hamilton and CL Moore.
Read MoreIn the spirit of Samhain which just passed, I would like to talk about one of my favorite ghost stories of all-time – Hellsgarde by C.L. Moore. This tale will be one of the main concepts that my band Eternal Winter will be covering on our upcoming album, Archaic Lore Enshrined: Songs of Savage Swords and Dark Mysticism. As the lyricist of the group, I recently had to become heavily immersed in the story, in order to pen some descriptive words to the coinciding epic that will appear on the release.
Read MoreIn the introduction to this edition, Jakes says that he was strongly influenced by Edison Marshall, and I don’t doubt that at all. This is the story of James the Frank, a half-European/half-Mongol who becomes a soldier in Genghis Kahn’s army.
Read MoreAs with most things, I find myself being exposed to the classics late in life, rather than during my formative years where most people seem to encounter them. As such, I've never read Jack Vance until now, “The Dying Earth” being my first. I was immediately enthralled by this collection of loosely-related short stories set in the distant future when our civilization is but a forgotten memory, machinery has been replaced by sorcery, and the sun is on the verge of being extinguished.
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