Starting a new 20-film watch-a-thon project. All previously unseen, all free to watch. The twist for this one is that I typed the word ‘mummy’ into Tubi’s search engine, and just chose the first 20 films that showed up.
While the eighteenth volume of the series included C.L. Moore’s Vintage Season and Robert Silverberg’s In Another Country, which takes place at the same time, this volume includes a story and an actual sequel.
The summer sun may still be baking us alive, but the haunt world clearly didn’t get the memo, because my inbox just lit up with juicy updates from none other than Edward Douglas of Midnight Syndicate. If you’ve ever wandered through a haunted attraction worth its cobwebs or spent any amount of time here at GCN, then you’ve heard of their work.
Planet Stories #30: Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, by Manly Wade Wellman (Paizo Publishing, March 2011). Cover by Kieran Yanner Wellman created his character Hok the Mighty in 1939 and wrote several follow up stories with the character.
A new work from Teel James Glenn is Not Born of Woman, the first in a new series called Paradise Investigations. Glenn has had books and series with several New Pulp publishers, most recently Bold Venture Press, before going to Pro Se Press and recently Airship 27.
Good afterevenmorn, Readers! If you haven’t heard of Netflix’ surprise movie sensation, I almost envy you. This movie is everywhere. It’s a phenomenal hit; becoming Netflix’ second-most viewed movie and has its songs everywhere on the Billboard top 10.
The Gernsback Days by Mike Ashley and Robert A.W. Lowndes is a big, 500-page book from Wildside Press that contains several related items. It is subtitled “A study of the evolution of modern science fiction from 1911 to 1936.” Half of the volume is taken up by “The Gernsback Days” by Ashley, which is a […]
What I’ve Been Listening To is back for another installment. Audiobooks are omnipresent in my life now. Work, home, car, walking, bedtime: I’m constantly listening to them. Often something I’ve listened to before, which lets my mind half-focus to no ill effect.
This is the complete Introduction to Joy To The World: The Fantasy Christmas Card Art of George Barr, a new volume of previously uncollected Barr artwork. Join the Kickstarter here. Several years ago, my wife Deb and I took a cross-country drive to the West Coast (or at least as cross-country as you can get by starting in the Chicago suburbs).
Rise of the Machine Girls (2019) – Tubi Arriving eleven years after Noboru Iguchi’s Machine Girl, this film is directed by Yûki Kobayashi in the frenetic style of a live-action manga — all high energy, insane reaction shots, and over-the-top violence.
A recent book I picked up is Tarzan of the Funnies by Robert R. Barrett. It was published in 2002 by Mad Kings Publishing and the House of Greystoke. This is a scholarly work that examines the early period of the Tarzan newspaper strips, both daily and Sundays, from 1929 to 1950.
This volume of the Tor Double series offers something it hasn’t offered before. Although several of the novellas previously published in the series have played with the tropes of fantasy novels, such as Jack Vance’s The Last Castle or Joanna Russ’s Souls, all of the stories published to this point have been science fiction.
Unfortunately, real life sometimes gets in the way of our “fun” jobs. Last weekend, Black Gate Photog Chris Z and I were forced to miss out on what was likely the biggest pop culture event in Chicago. As you may remember, for decades, the Chicago Comic Con was the Midwest’s scrappy answer to San Diego, with folding tables covered in long boxes, artists sketching for a few bucks, and maybe a handful of cult TV guests tucked away in the...
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When DAW Books launched in early 1972, one of their hallmarks was great cover art. Right from the start, their books featured covers by many of the top SF artists such as Frank Kelly Freas, John Schoenherr, Josh Kirby and Jack Gaughan – and eventually, Michael Whelan, who broke into the field with his cover for DAW’s edition of The Enchantress of World’s End by Lin Carter in 1975.
While I am not a big sword-and-sorcery fan, I have enjoyed Howard Andrew Jones‘s first two Hanuvar books. It was planned to be a series of five volumes. I have reviewed The Lord of a Shattered Land and The City of Marble and Blood, and now move to the third: Shadow of the Smoking Mountain.
One of the more unusual items in my Sword & Planet collection is Sojarr of Titan, written by Manly Wade Wellman (1903 – 1986) and published by Crestwood Publishing Company. This is a first edition, I believe, printed in 1949.
A new volume of pulp history I picked up is The Amazing Lomazow Collection, published by John Gunnison‘s Adventure House in 2025. This large-size, full-color book is over 370 pages and highlights the pulp collection of Dr.
“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 (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun.
Asimov’s Science Fiction, January/February and November/December 2024. Cover art by Maurizio Manzieri and John Sumrow Here’s a look at a few of the finalists for the 2024 Asimov’s Readers Award, voted on by readers and given to the most popular stories from Asimov’s Science Fiction the previous year.
Septic Man (2013) – Plex From the country that is about to bring you The Pee Pee Poo Poo Man (Canada), comes another scatological extravaganza — Septic Man! From the writer of the excellent ‘Pontypool’, this is an origin story, although I’m not sure if they plan to make any more.
This past Aug. 7-10, 2025, PulpFest 2025 was held in Pittsburgh, again at the DoubleTree in Mars, Penn. This was my third time attending. In addition, there were three associated events. There was FarmerCon XX, ERBFest 2025, and Doc Con 2025.
With this volume, the Tor Double series began an experiment and also a format change. Beginning with C.L. Moore’s 1946 story Vintage Season, Tor had Robert Silverberg write a sequel, In Another Country.
Battleborn is an upcoming action-packed sword and sorcery magazine curated by Sean CW Korsgaard and published by IronAge Media. Read this to learn the scope of this supercharged magazine, the crowdfunding campaign needed to make it a reality (Indiegogo Aug 1st!), and learn Black Gate Exclusive scoops! As an editor at Baen, Sean CW Korsgaard championed the Hanuvar series, and was mentored by the author, the late Howard Andrew Jones. Sean CW Korsgaard states that Battleborn is emulating Howard’s run on...
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I previously posted on the Code Name: Intrepid 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 — think strange creatures and tech, especially if it’s tied […]
Warlord of Ghandor by Del DowDell (DAW, August 1977). Cover by Don Maitz The genre of Sword & Planet fiction means a lot to me. I read it; I write it; I review it. And sometimes I find a book in the genre I don’t much care for.
Good afterevenmorn! I am still thinking about Superman. This is largely because I liked one image and the various algorithms on every platform have since decided that it’s all I get to see. I have, therefore, seen almost every possible take on the character, and it has me thinking a great deal about the heroes in fiction and why we consider them so.
When it comes to reading the works of Robert E. Howard (1906-1936), my first time was through his Cthulhu mythos and related works. This was via a very nice collection from Baen Books: Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors (1987) with a pretty cool cover.
“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 (Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun.
July-August 2025 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by GrandeDuc/Shutterstock, and Maurizio Manzieri Back in February the last surviving print science fiction magazines, Analog, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, were sold to Must Read Books, a new publisher backed by a small group of genre fans.
It’s that time again. I can sense casual Black Gate users getting complacent, so here is a new movie watch-a-thon project. This time, based on my recent experience with The Substance, I’m going to be unearthing flicks that deal with transformation; Jekyll and Hyde riffs, body horror, self-made monsters.
As I mentioned last week, in January of 1990, Tor began published a second series of Tor Doubles: The Tor Double Action Western series. Running for twenty months, the books in this series were anonymously edited and packaged by Martin H.
Look, I know I’ve been badly burned before when it comes to remaking classic horror, and the cinematic road to bringing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to the screen has often been paved with both hell and good intentions.
Today begins PulpFest 2025, and we have The Pulpster #34, the convention book. This one comes in at 60 pages. Also, this will be my third year attending PulpFest, and my first getting something into The Pulpster.
Like a lot of people, I fell under science fiction’s spell during those intermediate years when childhood blurs into adolescence, and fortunately for me, there was a thrift store around the corner from my middle school, with shelf after dusty shelf of used paperbacks that you could buy for twenty five or thirty cents apiece.
Planet Stories #29: Sojan the Swordsman by Michael Moorcock/ Under the Warrior Star by Joe R. Landsale (Paizo Publishing, October 5, 2010). Cover by Kieran Yanner When I saw this book, I immediately had to have it.
An interesting writer of pulp adventure fiction, Arthur O. Friel (1885-1959) focused on stories set in South America, which he knew well as an actual explorer of the region, though this occurred after he started writing his stories.
“Hey!” (you say to yourself). “I wonder what Bob has been watching? It’s been since May. Well, dear reader, I can’t leave you unfocused on our Monday work day, so let’s take a look, shall we? And – Gasp! – it’s all current stuff.
It has been 15 years since The Chain Story Project hit the internet; in 2010, Michael Stackpole led a bunch of authors to write stand-alone adventures all shared via “The Wanderers’ Club.” All the stories were “chained” together with a common element but enabled every contributor to showcase their own characters/worlds.
