Sword & Sorcery – What’s In A Name?

Sword & Sorcery has become a term of derision since the 1980s. There are good reasons for this but much of that derision is out of ignorance. The barbarian baby has been thrown out with […]

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Noticias Literatura 23-8

Two new speculative fiction books have been released in Spanish: La canción de Bêlit, an exploration of a lost period in the history of Robert E, Howard’s Conan the Barbarian; and Transcrepuscular, which considers a possible evolutionary symbiosis between humanity and nature, exposing our ethnocenrtic view of the world.

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Noticias Literatura 12-7

An overview of the rules of the 2017 Domingo Santos Award for short stories and the launch of “Ambition to the Light of the Moon” by Robert E. Howard.

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Noticias literatura 24-8

The first issue of a new Spanish language fantasy magazine, Iron and Bones, has been released, and Cixin Liu, author of the 2015 Hugo Award winning novel The Three Body Problem, will appear in Barcelona.

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Conan, by Crom!

Depictions of Conan have evolved over the years, from Emshwiller to Brundage to Arnold and now, to Jackson.

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Sword & Planet

Discussions of what is and what is not Sword & Sorcery can be a thorny proposition. On the one hand S&S is largely no different than epic Fantasy (ala Tolkien) except in scope or tone. […]

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L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP 2 HYBORIAN TIMES

As mentioned in an earlier post, L. Sprague de Camp attempted to turn Sword & Sorcery down a logical, Science Fictional route (ala John W. Campbell’s Unknown) with his Pusadian stories, but in this he […]

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What Gets Preserved?

The library of Alexandria was the largest and most comprehensive repository of knowledge in the ancient world. In 46 AD (according to some sources) it burned. Countless scrolls went up in flames, in some cases […]

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Slammin’ Pulp Hero Stories

There’s a new book out I’d like to recommend to anyone who’s a fan of pulp fiction– or anyone who just appreciates good writing. My friend Fred Blosser, known in some parts as an authority […]

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SWORD & SORCERY & J. R. R. TOLKIEN

In September 1937 an English Don named John Ronald Reuel Tolkien published a children’s book called The Hobbit. Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, had been dead for fifteen months. In 1950 Gnome Press […]

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