The Curse (Trans World Entertainment, September 11, 1987) and In the Tall Grass (Netflix, October 4, 2019) Yes, a new watch-a-thon, featuring me, a hopeless procrastinator, plumbing the depths of cinematic misery for your entertainment.

I’ve posted before on some of the various publications from editor/publisher Ken Krueger (1926-2009), and I guess I will do more as I find more little publications he put out. Like these two I discovered at Windy City (thanks to Dream Haven Books out of Minneapolis): Unique Tales and Unique.

The New Atlantis was originally published in The New Atlantis and Other Novellas of Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg and published by Hawthorn Books in May, 1975.  It was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award and won the Locus poll.

By Black Gate Photog Chris Z So, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip….. It was just another typical Friday night in the Goth Chick News bunker filling out expense reports for her Gothness when a call came in over “Zuni” (Goth Chick’s version of “Alexa”).

After reading and enjoying The Python God, the first Thomas Adam Grey thriller by Duane Laflin, I picked up the second one when it came out: The Fortune Cave. Laflin is a professional magician who has retired and now writes novels.

We all have our favorite obscure or neglected authors, writers we get touchy about and on whose behalf we’re instantly ready to jump on top of a table, ball up our fists and yell at the top of our voices, “HEY!! Don’t forget THIS GUY!!!” For me, Avram Davidson is at the top of that list.

Not only is the Dray Prescot series the longest running Sword & Planet series ever published in English, but it’s also consistently of a high quality. There are quite a few volumes that — for me—rival any of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Barsoom books.

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep   It can’t be a Summer of Pulp without some Robert E.

The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction by Ursula K. Le Guin (trade paperback reprint from Perigee Books, 1980). Cover by Michael Mariano I’m not a big fan of literary criticism in any field (although I have committed some), but one of my big books from my late teens onward was Le Guin’s The Language of the Night (1979), especially for the essays “From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” and “A Citizen of Mondath.” Le Guin has some...

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Yes, a new watch-a-thon, featuring me, a hopeless procrastinator, plumbing the depths of cinematic misery for your entertainment. This time around, I will be watching Lovecraftian and Lovecraftian-tangential films, and as usual they must be films I’ve never seen before (which makes the task trickier and bound for disaster).

In my prior posting on the Hellboy-related comics, I bemoaned the fact that it looked like we would not see any more titles, though there were several plot threads left unfinished. Thus, I was surprised to see new comics come out in 2025.

He Who Shapes was originally serialized in Amazing Stories between January and February, 1965. It won the Nebula Award, tying with Brian W. Aldiss’s The Saliva Tree, which appeared as half of Tor Double #3.

Quite a few writers who went on to bigger names in other genres wrote some of their earliest books in Sword & Planet. Michael Moorcock was one of these. He’s mostly known for his Elric series. Elric is a kind of anti-Conan.

After the release of The American Adventures of Solar Pons edited by David Marcum, we got the next issue of the scholarly journal of Solar Pons: The Pontine Dossier, Millennium Edition, Vol. 1, No. 5 (Winter 2024-25), edited by Derrick Belanger.

I’m a big fan of mystery stories, and I’ve read a lot of the genre’s major writers, from well-mannered Brits like Doyle, Christie, and Chesterton to hard-hearted Yanks like Hammet, Chandler, and McBain.

Dungeons & Dragons Supplement I: Greyhawk by Garg Gygax and Rob Kuntz (TSR, 1975; reprint edition 2003). Cover and interior art by Greg Bell Fifty years of Greyhawk and an amusing Castle Zagyg anecdote.

One of the earliest specialized pulp magazines was The Ocean, published by the Frank A. Munsey Co. in 1907 and 1908 for 11 issues. As indicated by its title, it published sea stories from a variety of authors.

Last week, I talked about the most recent audiobooks I’ve been listening to. After enjoying the Egil & Nix short story, two more Thieves World books, and finishing The Black Company again, I wanted more S&S.

  The Alien Critic Number Seven, November 1973. Published and edited by Richard E. Geis. I subscribed to TAC the following year after reading Geis’s column in IF. Geis really had the juice back then — this issue includes Frederik Pohl, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, Damon Knight, Poul Anderson, Robert Bloch, Miriam Allen de Ford, Ross Rocklynne, “James Tiptree, Jr.,” and others — including a letter from Harlan Ellison that lists the then-current contents of The Last Dangerous Visions.

Yes, a new watch-a-thon, featuring me, a hopeless procrastinator, plumbing the depths of cinematic misery for your entertainment. This time around, I will be watching Lovecraftian and Lovecraftian-tangential films, and as usual they must be films I’ve never seen before (which makes the task trickier and bound for disaster).

Houston, Houston, Do You Read? was originally published in Aurora: Beyond Equality, edited by Susan Janice Anderson and Vonda N. McIntyre and published by Fawcett Gold Medal in May, 1976. It won the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

Read Part I of this series, Don Wollheim, Edwin L. Arnold, and Otis Adelbert Kline. The most controversial of the second generation of Sword & Planet authors was certainly John Norman, which is the pseudonym for author John Lange, a philosophy professor.

Doc Atlas was created by Michael A. Black and Ray Lovato as a clear homage to Doc Savage. I have posted on him before, but Airship 27 teamed up with the authors to reprint all the stories in a consistent set of volumes, with hopefully some new works.

I’m sure you’ll agree that William Shatner is a man apart. Still going strong at ninety-four, he appears to maintain an admirable sense of humor about himself and the ups and downs of his long career, and he seems to have come to comfortable terms with Captain James Tiberius Kirk and Sergeant T.J.

Good afterevenmorn, Readers! I’m afraid my Doom hyperfixation is still in full effect. And as with all things that has my attention for longer than a few days my brain has latched onto it and created a story out of it.

Harold Lamb (1892-1962) was a prolific pulp author whom I have heard of, but had not read yet. This is more because his main area of work, for which he is justly praised, is his extensive historical adventure fiction, much of which appeared in Adventure for almost 20 years.

I continue to listen to audiobooks daily. I frequently drift off to sleep with a fifteen minute timer on. The BBC radio plays of the two Dirk Gently novels are regular late night listens. So is the terrific Marx Brothers homage, Flywheel, Shyster, and Flywheel.

Greyhawk Adventures: Saga of Old City (TSR, October 1985) Greyhawk… A cruel city. A harsh, pitiless city for a young orphan boy with no money and no friends — but plenty of enemies! Enter the Old City of Greyhawk, that marvelous place where dreams — and nightmares — come true.

Boys from County Hell (Six Mile High Productions, April 2020) and Twilight (Summit Entertainment, November 21, 2008) 20 vampire films, all first time watches for me. Come on — sink ’em in. Boys from County Hell (2020) – Prime/Shudder Ah, British and British-adjacent horror comedies.

An interesting nostalgia fanzine devoted to movies, books, radio, sci-fi, comics (books and strips), art, including pulp, was The New Captain George’s Whizzbang. The bimonthly — later quarterly — lasted for 18 issues from 1968 to 1974.

Seven American Nights was originally published in Orbit 20, edited by Damon Knight and published by Harper & Row in March, 1978. It was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. Seven American Nights is the first of two Wolfe stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series.

My fellow Canadian James Nicoll continues to be one of my favorite SF bloggers, probably because he covers stuff I’m keenly interested in. Meaning exciting new authors, mixed with a reliable diet of vintage classics.

For the last few years, Will Murray has been writing new novels featuring The Spider under the Wild Adventures of The Spider line from Altus Press through the Adventures in Bronze website. At present, he has done four novels, and I finally got the first three novels.

Last Friday, as an early Father’s Day gift, my wife arranged for us to spend the afternoon at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, which is hosting a wonderful new exhibition dedicated to the memory and achievement of a great American artist.

Swordsmen in the Sky (Ace, 1964). Cover by Frank Frazetta Swordsmen in the Sky, edited by Donald Wollheim If our genre has a holy grail to find, this would be it. I read this collection as a kid. Found it in our local library.

Here we have Michael Stradford‘s third book on the cover artwork using Steve Holland (1925-1997) as the model: Steve Holland: Paperback Hero, which came out in 2023 from Gizmoe Press. It follows Steve Holland: The Torn Shirt Sessions and Steve Holland: The World’s Greatest Illustration Art Model, both of which I have reviewed, and followed […]

Having finished the first 100 issues of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, I did a post last week on Roy Thomas’s memoirs and that series. Which OF COURSE you read, here. I started reading the first Savage Sword of Conan Omnibus from Marvel, but I’m still in a CtB mood.