This one falls into the school of warriors inherently bad, women inherently good type of story, which I don’t care for any more than I care for the men inherently superior, women inherently inferior story.
Sword and sorcery has gone through some lean decades since the boom of the 70s and early 80s, but things have been turning around in recent years
Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser Joe Bonadonna iUniverse trade paper $19.95 ebook $4.99 Kindle Nook When I first came across this book, the title made me think it might be something […]
With a Silken Fist Tom Doolan Ebook only $2.99 Kindle Smashwords Tom Doolan is a short story writer. He’s also a husband, father, full time graduate student, part time employee, and gamer. This means he […]
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. […]
Sometimes great books come and go, waiting for another chance to be discovered and given the place on our bookshelves they truly deserve. Sword & Sorcery is no exception. In 1951, Poul Anderson wrote what […]
Steve Jackson is one of the biggest names in British fantasy fiction. Along with Ian Livingstone, he was one of the founders of Games Workshop, one of the first major stores selling role-playing games in […]
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 […]
Talking animals and floating heads. You know you want it.
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 […]
Witchery: A Duo of Weird Tales Keith Chapman Black Horse Books Kindle ebook $0.99 I’ve been on something of a pulp bent lately, especially Weird Tales type pulp. So I’m glad to mention there are […]
Two things happened in 1950. One: L. Sprague de Camp read his first Conan story. And two: L. Sprague de Camp would try to direct Sword & Sorcery down another track altogether. Those two don’t […]
So, you heard about that Sailor Moon reboot everyone is all excited about? It’s been pushed back to 2014 at least. Instead, here are the more notable examples of what you’ll have to tide you […]
Judge books by their cover? Everyone does it. That’s why – and despite the mis-marketing, agenting “horror stories” (both artist and author) and egregious lack of talent (cover-wise) – books and yes, magazines, still get […]
Comic strips were the only game in town in the 1930s but these strips were eventually collected into omnibuses that lead to the standard comic book. Heroic Fantasy was slow to appear in the “four-color […]
Britain’s Abaddon Books is a seething brew of villainous steampunk, sleek spaceships, cruel sorcery, and blood-soaked horror. I tracked their commissioning editor David Moore down to his lair, where I forced him to unravel a cracked and […]
I was recently in London – less than a week ago to be exact – and had the great pleasure of once again attending another MCM Expo at the Excel Centre in east London. It […]
After the last few S&S works of the early 1940s, such as “Dragon Moon” by Henry Kuttner and the short-lived Unknown, Sword & Sorcery lost steam. With Robert E. Howard dead for five or more […]
While Fritz Leiber was creating a boisterous style of Sword & Sorcery based upon E. R. Eddison and James Branch Cabell, Norvell W. Page wrote two novels that seem on the surface to be closer […]
Number 13: a 13th Amazing Stories post. I interrupt my regularly scheduled posts, in my ongoing series of discussing writers of classic science fiction (and the inner meanings therein), to consider the number 13 (and […]
A big stack of first looks this week, and then it’ll be time to make decisions about what to add for the regular weekly commentary. Those of you worried about the absence of Attack on […]
In 1939 Farnsworth Wright began a move away from Sword & Sorcery. With Robert E. Howard dead, he no longer championed the dark fantasy tale, publishing Henry Kuttner’s Elak as the last. This meant that […]
Long before last year’s movie, John Carter and friends were appearing in the comics….
Henry Kuttner deserves our thanks. If things had been left to Clifford Ball, Sword & Sorcery would have fizzled out in the pages of Weird Tales. Ball, who we know very little about, was the […]
It’s easy to discuss authors for their contributions are evident. You just have to read the stories. The great editors are harder to corral, for the editor’s job is one of selection, guidance, subjective acts […]
Robert E. Howard may have invented Sword & Sorcery with the first King Kull tale, but he was not the only author working with the raw materials of heroic fantasy. We have already mentioned C. […]
Robert E. Howard produced several series: Solomon Kane, Kull of Valusia, Bran Mak Morn, and finally Conan the Cimmerian, all existing more or less in the same world at different times. In “Kings of the […]
Circumstance plays a part in history. It was inevitable that a woman would eventually try her hand at Sword & Sorcery. It’s our good fortune that C. L. Moore was writing for Weird Tales in […]
For this week, I’m going to do things differently. Rather than review a single work, I’ll look at three stories set in the same universe. One of the reasons I decided to focus my blogging […]
2013Feb17 – Time spent in front of a computer will suck you into a rift in the space-time continuum. You doubt this? Leave a clock near your computer and voila … tempus fugit. (If you […]
Recent Comments