Profiles in Pulp: The First Science Fiction Magazine(s)
Is Amazing Stories the world’s first science fiction magazine? Yes. Did it get there all on its lonesome? No.
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On Cover Mentions
Cover mentions. Every author loves them, but do they actually help sell magazines?
The Retro Look and Stranger Things
Designer M. D. Jackson defends the visual style of the Netflix series Stranger Things, saying that its retro 80s look is a deliberate homage.
Boom & Bust: Lester Del Rey’s 12 Year Cycle
Taking a look at Lester Del Rey’s theory of a 12 year boom and bust cycle for science fiction, 36 years on.
Conan, by Crom!
Depictions of Conan have evolved over the years, from Emshwiller to Brundage to Arnold and now, to Jackson.
AMAZING THINGS You Should Know: Nebula Awards Skip Frank M. Robinson Presentation
Frank M. Robinson’s special award ceremony WILL be rescheduled!
The Club House 2/28/14
A trip back in time: Earl takes us into his library and pulls some influential fanzines from the shelves.
Bad Science Fiction and Fantasy Art
In order to understand what makes really good science fiction and fantasy art, you have to look at a few pieces of bad science fiction and fantasy art.
21st Century Pulp Artist
Normally in this space I rattle on about pulp magazines. Today we’ll look at a different type of periodical: comic books. Or, if you will, graphic narratives. More specifically, we’ll examine the work of one […]
A conversation with the Hall of Fame illustrator Murray Tinkelman
This past February I had the great pleasure of speaking with Mr. Murray Tinkelman, the famous and award winning illustrator. This came about by my wanting to do something different for once in the blog. […]
Review: Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan
Nine Horrors and a Dream By Joseph Payne Brennan Ballantine Books. 1962. $0.35 Contents: 1 • Slime • (1953) • novelette by Joseph Payne Brennan 33 • Levitation • (1958) • short story by Joseph […]
Who Knows What “Tomorrow” Brings?
Every family, every tribe, every cultural group has its own myths. We use stories, legends, folk tales, and even parables as means of understanding why things are the way they are, and of teaching why […]
A Pair of Witchy Weird Tales
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 […]
Demons of the Night: Early Stories by Seabury Quinn
Demons of the Night Seabury Quinn Gene Christie, ed. Black Dog Books Tpb $19.95 182 p. Ebook During the heyday of Weird Tales in the 1920s and 1930s, there were four authors whose work was […]
A Commissioning Editor Speaks: David Moore of Abaddon Books
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 […]
NORVELL W. PAGE: WAN TENGRI – PRESTER JOHN
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 […]
SWORD & SORCERY BECOMES A SUB-GENRE: HENRY KUTTNER’S ELAK AND PRINCE RAYNOR
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 […]
The Amazing Virgil Finlay
Whenever I think about black-and-white illustrations from the old science fiction magazines, it is always the work of Virgil Finlay that I picture in my head. And why not? The man was a genius with […]
We Can Hear You Scream: An Overview of SF/Horror Literature
The fear of the dark, the unknown, the monster standing right behind you ready to tear you limb from limb…is part of the human condition. Since the dawn of civilization we have been terrified by […]
NOT QUITE SWORD & SORCERY: EARLY FANTASY
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. […]
Claire Winger Harris: Breaking Amazing’s ‘Cosmic Ceiling’
Brian Aldiss identified Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as the first science fiction novel in his seminal history The Billion Year Spree. Although the genre often looks back on this work as its starting point, it was […]
Jirel of Joiry: Sword & Sorcery’s First Lady
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 […]
Of Shadows and Serpent – The First Sword & Sorcery Tale
When people think of 1929 they usually recall the Great Depression and “Black Tuesday” (October 29th). I prefer to think of it as the year Sword & Sorcery was born. For S&S, like its greatest […]
Playing the Short Game: How to Sell Your Short Fiction (Part 1)
Introduction: Who I am and what this series will cover Hi and welcome. This is the first in a weekly series of posts I’ll be doing on how to market and sell short fiction. In […]
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