Edgar Rice Burroughs and The Pulps: The Expansion of Genre Fiction
Edgar Rice Burroughs and The Pulps: The Expansion of Genre Fiction by Ryan Harvey The first pulp magazine was Argosy, which changed to an all-fiction format in 1896. Each issue delivered a thick stack of stories printed on low-cost paper. More pulp magazines followed, and by the 1920s, they had changed the way people across the country consumed fiction. They made reading stories of wild adventures, Western action, granite-jawed...
On the Occasion of Lovecraft’s Birthday
Tomorrow, August 20th, marks the 132nd birthday of the biggest name in cosmic horror, the man who made tentacles fashionable and non-Euclidian geometry scary, H.P. Lovecraft. And, by some wild twist of metaphysical synchronicity, it’s also our buddy Fletcher’s birthday, so naturally, he has a few things to say about Lovecraft. On the Occasion of Lovecraft’s Birthday by Fletcher Vredenburgh I can remember the exact day I...
Andrew Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness
Can you name the 1970s sword-and-sorcery anthology series helmed by a fantasy author/editor, featuring original work from the biggest names as well as up-and-comers, that’s initial volume sported a Frank Frazetta cover and ran to five books in total? If you said Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords, you’re right! But if you said Andrew Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness . . . you’re also right! Following just a few...
Dehumanizing Violence and Compassion in Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails”
Goodman Games and Tales From the Magician’s Skull are honored to report that this essay by Jason Ray Carney, Dehumanizing Violence and Compassion in Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails,” has been nominated for a 2022 Robert E. Howard Award in the category of Outstanding Achievement, Essay — otherwise known as The Hyrkanian! The Robert E. Howard Awards 2022 will be presented this weekend, June 10 at Howard Days...
The Far-Flung Literary Webs of Manly Wade Wellman
The Far-Flung Literary Webs of Manly Wade Wellman by Brian Murphy I’ve always been interested in the great chain of influence, the through-lines from one writer to the next. And I still get a thrill when I discover them, or better yet, experience them in the texts themselves. One of these great through-lines is Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986). While he does not seem widely read today, the threads of Manly’s life and work are...
No Darkness Without Light: Roger Zelazny’s Jack of Shadows
No Darkness Without Light: Roger Zelazny’s Jack of Shadows by Bill Ward “I am Jack of Shadows!” he cried out. “Lord of Shadow Guard! I am Shadowjack, the thief who walks in silence and in shadows! I was beheaded in Igles and rose again from the Dung Pits of Glyve. I drank the blood of a vampire and ate a stone. I am the breaker of the Compact. I am he who forged a name in the Red Book of Ells. I am the prisoner in the jewel. I...
Beyond the Gate of Shadows: Harold Lamb’s The Grand Cham
Beyond the Gate of Shadows: Harold Lamb’s The Grand Cham by Bill Ward “As evening closed in they were threading through gorges that hastened the coming of darkness. Often they looked back in the failing light. No one desired to be last. And then Rudolfo, in the lead, halted abruptly. ‘Before them in the twilight stood a great mound of human skulls.” When we are first introduced to Michael Bearn, young Breton ship-master in...
A Look at Andre Norton’s Witch World
A Look at Andre Norton’s Witch World by Fletcher Vredenburgh Born in 1912, Alice Mary Norton worked as a teacher, a librarian, and finally a reader for Gnome Press before becoming a full-time writer in 1958. By then she’d already had a dozen books published, including such classics as Star Man’s Son, 2250 A.D. and Star Rangers. Based on their easy style and simpler characterizations, most of her early books...
My Favorite Solomon Kane Tale: “Wings in the Night”
My Favorite Solomon Kane Tale: “Wings in the Night” by Robert E. Howard by Fletcher Vredenburgh “Wings in the Night” (1932), is one of Solomon Kane’s, Robert E. Howard’s swashbuckling Puritan, African adventures. In the face of darkness, he sees himself as Satan’s implacable foe. Kane’s a dour man, dedicated wholly to defeating evil and meting out justice. In two separate stories, he spends years hunting for the killers of...
A Look at John Bellairs’ The Face in the Frost
It Was a Dark and Silly Night – A Look at John Bellairs’ The Face in the Frost by Bill Ward Whimsy and suspense don’t generally mesh all that well together, for they tend to swing toward opposite poles of reader engagement. Whimsy tickles the intellect, relying on novel juxtapositions and a great deal of textual playfulness – it’s cute, it’s precise, and most often it resides in a place of certainty and safety....
Where to Start With Robert E. Howard
Where to Start With Robert E. Howard by Bill Ward Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) was a giant and a father to giants, his literary creations so potent that they have informed popular culture and permeated mass consciousness down to the present day. But their very ubiquity can obscure and deceive – if two people strike up a conversation about Conan, are they actually talking about the same Conan? What’s going on with all of these...
Preserving the Flame: A Review of Phantasmagoria Special Edition Series #5: Karl Edward Wagner
Preserving the Flame: A Review of Phantasmagoria Special Edition Series #5: Karl Edward Wagner by Brian Murphy What makes Karl Edward Wagner’s best writing so powerful? I believe he was chasing a dark muse, dangerous and unpredictable, vital and vivid. The one we see on the page of “Into the Pines,” a story which alone makes the new Phantasmagoria Special Edition Series#5: Karl Edward Wagner, worth its price tag: Out into the pines...