If it’s going to succeed in the 21st century sword-and-sorcery needs writers that know and respect its forms, classic authors, and traditions, but are unafraid to take these elements and create something new. In short, it needs writers that deliver what we know and love about sword-and-sorcery while breaking a few rules along the way in the service of their art.
Read MoreThis week: Poul Anderson, Cauldron Born, Weirdbook, Weird Tales, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, bootleg Conan LSD blotter paper, and more.
Read MoreDoom, death, and time weigh upon everything within “The Werewolf Howls,” written by Clifford Ball, which creates associations to the inhuman and the profane unknowable, the scapegoat otherness, the satanic animalism, the wizened barbarism.
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 MoreMany people have asked when DMR Books will open for submissions. The time is nigh! On All Hallows’ Eve we will begin accepting submissions for the Halloween-themed sword-and-sorcery anthology Samhain Sorceries.
Read MoreThis week: Clark Ashton Smith, Michael Moorcock, Schuyler Hernstrom, Brom, Tarzan, Black Sabbath (the film), and more.
Read MoreIf monsters existed, would they be works of nature? If those who wrote or read the folktale believed in the monsters and the magic happenings, are those constructs artificial? A challenge occurs when reexamining or modernizing folklore.
Read MoreStorytelling and folktales have been with human beings for a long time. The superior folktale is that which is touched by both the fantastical and the frightful. These kinds are the tales that get retold and transformed again and again, especially by those who yearn to feel and dwell upon the macabre and the decadent and the most astonishing, heightened emotions brought on by elements of the grotesque and the sublime.
Read MoreI’ve often wondered, why hasn’t Michael Moorcock’s sword-and-sorcery fiction ever been adapted to the silver screen? It could have been. Moorcock was approached by the likes of filmmaker Ralph Bakshi for an adaptation of Elric. This would have been circa 1978.
Read MoreThis week: Fritz Leiber, Clark Ashton Smith, Frank Frazetta, Talbot Mundy, Alien, Poe, Ramsey Campbell and more.
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