Seabury Grandin Quinn (1889–1969) is best known to the pulp world today as the author of the occult detective Jules de Grandin. However, he wrote more than just those works. I have posted on a pair of volumes from Black Dog Books that include both his non-series works as well as samples of some of […]

What? It’s been TWO WHOLE WEEKS since I told you what I’ve been thinking about? Well, we certainly can’t have that now, can we? I start with a bit of snark, and finish with a mini-rant.

“I’ve been away from Sati-Baa for ten years,” Omari said. “I’ve walked every inch of Ki Khanga and never truly felt at home. Now I have the means not only to return but establish something of my own.

There are many fantasy role playing games (RPGs) available but I’ve hardly played any. Dungeons & Dragons is the best known. I had a couple High School friends who read fantasy and probably would have played D&D with me.

As you will see, my choices are on the whole rather fluffy, but these are the films that I return to time and time again for comfort, or as a way to reset my brain. I’d be very interested to find out if any of my favorites align with any of your own – please let me know in the comments below! Without further ado, in no particular order, and no ratings (because they are all 10s), let’s get cracking!...

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Doris Piserchia was born Doris Summers on October 11, 1928 in Fairmont, West Virginia. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from Fairmont State College in 1950. Although her family expected her to go into teaching, Piserchia had no interested in teaching an instead, after graduation, she served in the United States Navy until 1954, achieving the rank of Lieutenant.

The Weigher (Baen Books, November 1992). Cover by C. W. Kelly First contact stories are one of science fiction’s major subgenres, an important branch of stories about aliens, going back at least to H.

Continuing to catch up on my reading of the excellent Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective series from Airship 27, this time I go over volumes 15 to 18, which are the most recent volumes. I had hoped, like my last posting, to do just three collections and a novel, but it wasn’t to be.

I am gut punched to hear that author James Sallis (December 1944 – January 27, 2026) has died. James was the closest thing to a writing mentor I had. He was a friend, and certainly one of the most talented writers I’ve ever known.

Good afterevenmorn, Readers! I took myself on a date Thursday night. It was very romantic. I first went to a bookshop to pick up a new book for myself (this was because I had forgotten to take my book with me, and could not spend the evening passing time without a book.

Steeger Books in the summer of 2025 came out with a new expanded edition of Don Hutchison’s The Great Pulp Heroes (1996, 2007, 2025). This work has long been an excellent introduction and overview of the world of pulp heroes.

I’m working on a Douglas Adams post as part of an upcoming recurring feature on his non-fiction quotes. But I got sidetracked reading Calvin and Hobbes this past weekend. Much of America is in a war against brutal weather.

A series that I wanted but had a difficult time getting was the Berserker series by Chris Carlsen. There are three books, all from Sphere Books, published in 1977, 1977, & 1979 respectively. I finally got the last one and just finished reading it.

Following the excellent Starship Troopers feedback last week, here’s a selection that might be a little less controversial. Kidding. The Party (1968) Who’s in it? Peter Sellers, Claudine Longet, Steve Franken, Denny Miller What’s it about? Hrundi V.

Robert Moore Williams was born in Farmington, Missouri on June 19, 1907 and attended the Missouri School of Journalism, from which he graduated in 1931 with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. He married Margaret Jelley in 1938 and they had one daughter.

Welcome to more Dark Muse News. This post reviews Anna Smith Spark’s A Sword of Bronze and Ashes. It was released in September 2023 (Flame Tree Press, cover illustration by Broci) and is the first book of the series The Making of This World: Ruined.

The name John Maddox Roberts (1947 – ) first came to my attention as a writer of Conan sword & sorcery pastiches from Tor. He wrote eight, and when I talk to other REH fans Roberts’ name is almost always listed near the top of the Conan pastiche writers.

Right on schedule in September, the fourth Thomas Adam Grey thriller by Duane Laflin, The Deadly Skulls, came out. As I’ve been enjoying this series, I quickly got and read it. This series continues to be great, and I look forward to the next ones.

It’s still January, which means I haven’t yet abandoned my ambitious New Year’s Resolution to get caught up on my favorite blogs. I started with Rich Horton’s excellent Strange at Ecbatan, and this week I’ve been spending time at Dave Hook’s book blog A Deep Look by Dave Hook.

Savageology is a new collection of works on Doc Savage by Philip José Farmer and others from Meteor House Press. It’s a sort of follow-on to The Man Who Met Tarzan, which collected Farmer’s work on Tarzan.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve shared some Things I Think. Since I just jumped back down the Castle rabbit hole, and finished off the associated Nikki Heat books, I had the basis for this column.

I’ve had a little think about my favorite films, and what makes them my favorites. As you will see, my choices are on the whole rather fluffy, but these are the films that I return to time and time again for comfort, or as a way to reset my brain.

James Silke (1931 – ) is something of a renaissance man in the arts. He’s a visual artist and prose writer, a set and costume designer, photographer, and comic book guy. Most people who I meet recognize him as a comic artist/writer, although I’ve never read any of his graphic stuff.

Raymond F. Jones was born in Salt Lake City on November 15, 1915. He studied engineer and English at the University of Utah before working as a radio engineer. He later suggested that getting an English degree is one of the worst things a writer could do.

About a year ago, I added Terraforming Mars to my collection of board games, fascinated by the premise. At the very end of the year, a local friend proposed to get together and try playing it. On 2 January, three of us sat down to a first game, using the beginner option of everyone playing a standard corporation and keeping all ten of their initial cards without having to pay for them.

Chariots of the Gods? by Erich von Däniken (Bantam Books, 1971) In my last post, I mentioned Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods? to introduce a Ken Bulmer (as Manning Norvil) heroic fantasy trilogy.

A popular element in comics is the crossover of different characters and worlds. This idea has come over to the pulps, usually with crossovers involving different characters from different companies. But what about authors with different character series who never met in the original stories? Hence, the interest of having characters from Edgar Rice Burroughs‘s […]

Good afterevenmorn, Readers! I’m going to rant a bit this post, so if apologies in advance for getting too serious about things that are, in fact, quite fun. I want to talk friendships. Friendships in fiction, specifically, and how they’re often hijacked by well-meaning, representation-starved folks, and how that robs us of examples of deep, meaningful, powerful, but entirely platonic love in real life.

I picked up a new work by Marcos Legaria, the author of L’Affaire Barlow: H.P. Lovecraft and the Battle for His Literary Legacy. Legaria is a leading authority on R.H. Barlow, the young fan of H.P. Lovecraft who became his literary executor after his death.

I bought LA Noire on sale, several years ago. But I did not actually dig in to play it until last year. 68 hours of game play later, I completed it the second week of January, this year. LA Noire is one of my all-time favorite games.

The infamous Chariots of the Gods was written by Erich von Däniken (1935), who died last week. Von Däniken was a Swiss author, and Chariots of the Gods was published in German in 1968. It was issued in English from Bantam in 1971, and I read it shortly thereafter, though I don’t remember where I got the copy.

The Devoured Worlds trilogy by Megan E. O’Keefe: The Blighted Stars, The Fractured Dark, and The Bound Worlds (Orbit, May 23, 2023, September 26, 2023, and June 25, 2024). Covers by Jaime Jones It’s January 17, and I’m doing a fairly good job on at least one of my New Year’s resolutions — catching up on some of my favorite blogs.

Horace Brown Fyfe, Jr. who published under then name H.B. Fyfe, was born on September 30, 1918 in Jersey City, New Jersey. He was educated at Stevens Academy before attending Columbia University. Fyfe served in World War II and earned a Bronze Star.

For this round of Dark Muse News, we’ll be seeking affirmations. I’m older than the typical kid who plays with toy-soldier figurines (well, I’m over 50) and love to play with plastic figurines.

Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton (Bantam Books, April 4, 1977) Michael Crichton (1942 – 2008) apparently always wanted to be a writer but earned an MD from Harvard Medical school in the meantime.

In fall 2025, we g0t the second novel in the Paradise Investigations series from Teel James Glenn. This series, set in 1939 New York City, stars Adam Paradise, a private investigator who is Frankenstein’s monster.

Summer 2025 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and the November/December issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by John Jennings, Eldar Zakirov, and Shutterstock It’s a bittersweet month for fans of print SF magazines.

I have posted several times on the various collections taken from the men’s adventure magazines (or MAMs), which succeeded the pulps. The folks who put out the excellent Men’s Adventure Quarterly, Robert Deis and Wyatt Doyle, have been putting out volumes in the Men’s Adventure Library, reprinting art and fiction (and nonfiction, some of which […]

(As long as Black Gate lets me post here, this will run every year the week of Howard’s passing (January 16), to help keep his flame alive) A LIFE IS NOT IMPORTANT EXCEPT IN THE IMPACT IT HAS ON OTHER LIVES – Jackie Robinson’s epitaph I did an interview last week with Jason Waltz for his ’24 in 42′ podcast (Yeah, I know: You just can’t wait to hear that one…).

I discovered Adrian Cole (1949 – ) in the late 1970s through his Dream Lords trilogy. 1. Plague of Nightmares (1975) 2. Lord of Nightmares (1975) 3. Bane of Nightmares (1976) All were from Zebra books, with covers by Tom Barber, Jack Gaughan (maybe), and Tom Barber respectively.

Katabasis by R. F. Kuang (Harper Voyager, August 26, 2025) and We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad (S&S/Marysue Rucci Books, September 23, 2025). Covers: Patrick Arrasmith, uncredited The New York Times traces the inception of the “dark academia” genre to Donna Tart’s The Secret History, a Gothic murder mystery involving Classics students at a liberal arts college.

George Allan England was born in Fort McPherson, Nebraska on February 9, 1877. He attended Harvard University, where he earned Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees. In 1903, he published Underneath the Bough: A Book of Verses.

Whose Body? by Dorothy Sayers (Avon Books, 1948) Mysteries aren’t my first choice in genre fiction; science fiction and fantasy appeal to me more consistently. Even so, I’ve read a fair number of mysteries, by authors from Dashiell Hammett to P.D.

Jeffrey Lord was a house name used for a series of 37 fantasy/SF novels published between 1969 and 1984. They were billed as an “adult” fantasy series, meaning that they had sex in them. However the sex was pretty mild by today’s standards.

Back in September, we got a new Lazarus Gray book: The Adventures of Lazarus Gray, Vol. 16, from Barry Reese. This one has a novel, Shadows Over Yalta. As with other recent Reese works, this is from his own imprint, Reese Unlimited.

Good afterevenmorn, Readers! How was your winter holidays? I hope you found it gentle and restful and full of the things that make you happy. I spent some time with family, which is always lovely, and more time by myself recovering (the joys of being a massive introvert).

Over the past couple of years, S.T. Joshi’s Sarnath Press has been putting out weird-fiction collections from several lesser-known authors published in Weird Tales and other pulp magazines. At present, there are almost a dozen volumes, with more in the works.

Happy 2026! Let’s kick butt for another year. Or at least, limp to the finish in 52 weeks. I really enjoy ‘meeting’ with my friends – and some strangers – here at Black Gate every Monday morning. Keep checking in, and let’s keep the discourse going on things we love.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their  rhyme of things not found within  recorded  time. from ‘Mythopoeia‘ (1931) by JRR Tolkien The impetus to write my Tolkien series came from rewatching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and realizing just how much I dislike them.

Here’s a New Year’s treat* to distract you from the fact that I haven’t completed a new themed watch-a-thon (it’s coming, eventually). I’ve had a little think about my favorite films, and what makes them my favorites.

Now that I’ve looked at all of the official Tor Doubles, plus the proto-version and the unpublished version, where to next if you like the double format. Obviously, there are the Ace Doubles, which ran from 1952 until 1978.  That series provides the reader with at least 261 additional volumes of science fiction, plus a similar number of westerns and numerous mystery novels.

Happy New year! This emerging blog salutes Sue Granquist, who contributed every other Thursday championing Goth Chick News in this very time slot. Sue Granquist contributed 741 articles over 16 years here on Black Gate with a special focus on horror movies and conventions (the longest-running column in Black Gate history).

Star Barbarian (Lancer Books, 1969). Cover by Jeff Jones I picked up a couple of books by Dave Van Arnam called Star Barbarian and Lord of Blood that have connections to the Sword & Planet genre. They’re set in a future time after Earth has colonized many planets.

Code Name: Intrepid is an interesting series from Robert J. Mendenhall, available through his own imprint Blue Planet Press. CNI is a special team of military and civilian experts who handle cases that are extraordinary or of an unusual order in the 1930s.

Column: Reflections, Autographs, by Robert Silverberg Silverberg spent the summer of ’99 signing copies of Dying Inside. 7,000 autographs — a novella in and of itself. He muses on autographs and people who collect them.

At PulpFest 2025, we got the third volume of Donald Keyhoe’s Devildog Squadron series, The Mystery Meteor, from Age of Aces Books, after skipping a year. This was his second series, started in 1931, the same month as Philip Strange.

Throughout 2025, I shared with you what I was Reading, Watching, and Listening To (audiobook-wise), I also covered a little bit of videogaming in a couple columns. But I figured I’d talk about some of the games I played this year, in one post.

I’ll get back to regular posts next week but one of my readers asked if I had any shelfies to show of my collection. I took a few and will post them but these only represent a portion of all my books.

Today, nearly fifty years after its release, Star Wars still feels fresh, exciting and entirely organic. It is a naturally progressing story. Everything in it matters, and every moment leads inexorably and inevitably to the next moment, as it should — building to a tremendous climax and satisfying denouement.

This volumes  was originally scheduled for September 1991, but the series was cancelled before it would see print. Both stories were eventually published by Tor in different formats. Had this volume been printed, it would have been the first volume in the series to include two original stories.

This has been a rough year for Black Gate. On January 16 we lost Howard Andrew Jones, who created this site virtually single-handedly. Black Gate had existed as a print magazine since November 2000, and I’d launched the website a few months earlier, but it was a pretty flimsy affair.

Captain Hawklin is a New Pulp hero written by Charles F. Millhouse. He is a former World War I fighter pilot, later becoming an adventurer and inventor, and is rich from those inventions. He is based in Crown City, a large fictional city located on the west coast of the United States.

One of the more popular time-wasting activities these days is the “desert island” game, where people compile lists of books, albums, and movies that they could in no instance dispense with, works that they would take with them if they had to be exiled for life on a desert island.

Good afterevenmorn, Readers! I feel like I manifested this… But I’m getting ahead of myself. Does anyone remember me lamenting about how difficult it was for original or new folks to break out in the entertainment industry? I’ve been griping since Adam was knee-high to a grasshopper (how’s that for a malaphor?) that original stories aren’t getting made anymore, with production companies all settling for established IPs with a huge fanbase they can take advantage of.

After catching up on Sinister Cinema‘s Armchair Fiction Lost World/Lost Race Classics series recently, they popped out four more, bringing the series up to 66 total. Again, all the works are new to me.

I have been using my library app a lot for audiobooks the past few months. I just borrowed (not all at once. I’m not a twit) the entire Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio shows, as part of my Douglas Adams rabbit-hole trip (which started when I listened to this book).

Their Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass.

Read Part 1 here. #6 – The Force Awakens (2015) A great way to kickstart the franchise after a dozen years, even if it is a retread of A New Hope. There’s a lot to love in this film; I think it features some of Williams’ best work with recurring leitmotifs that instantly feel like they’ve been part of the entire saga, I love the new principal characters, the action set-pieces are thrilling and tick all my visual/sound design boxes,...

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At this year’s PulpFest, I picked up the fourth Zana O’Savin novel by Craig McDonald, The Night Shepherd, with another great cover by Douglas Klauba. This series provides several pastiches of pulp heroes, but uses an interesting concept.

The fourth collection of the Ed Race series that ran in the back of The Spider pulp from Popular Publications is now out. Also known as The Masked Marksman, this series ran for 55 stories from 1934 to 1943.

The second issue of RevERBerate, a fanzine devoted to Edgar Rice Burroughs, came out in September. The first issue came out in May 2025, and, like the first, the second one is 48 pages printed on high-quality, glossy stock, perfect-bound with cardstock covers.

Stormgate Press, publisher of Captain Hawklin and Pulp Reality, has put out the third wave in their series of Stormgate Press Quick Read Books with three new books. All are written by Charles F. Millhouse, who is the man behind Stormgate Press.

Many creators often have several characters they have created, but usually have one that overshadows all the rest. This is true for many, including Robert E. Howard (1906–36), a pulp writer who is credited as the father of sword & sorcery.

After too long, we finally get the second Doc Atlas volume from Airship 27. 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 […]

I obtained a new work on Solomon Kane by Fred Blosser: The Solomon Kane Companion. It’s a new addition to his “Informal Guide to Robert E. Howard” series from Pulp Hero Press. This brings this series to six volumes.