Austin Hall was born on July 27, 1880. While working as a cowboy, Hall was asked to write a story. This led to his career as an author, writing westerns, science fiction and fantasy stories, with westerns forming the majority of his published work.

Tam Lin (Tor Books paperback reprint edition, April 1982). Cover by Thomas Canty There’s been a lot of genre fiction set at schools. Hogwarts is an obvious example, but such settings were around long before Harry Potter; Heinlein’s Space Cadet, The Uncanny X-Men, and Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea were all there first.

I discovered a new collection of pulp-style short stories in Honor Among Rogues by Logan D. Whitney. This small volume, 4- by 7-inches size, has six short stories set around the world from the 1890s to the 1940s in several genres: Western, aviation, action-adventure, and more.

The Mighty Barbarians: Great Sword and Sorcery Heroes, edited by Hans Stefan Santesson (Lancer Books, 1969). Cover by Jim Steranko Hans Stefan Santesson (1914 – 1975) was born in France and lived in Sweden with his parents until 1923 when his mother immigrated to the US.

Goodafterevenmorn, Readers! I had an interaction online that took me aback a little bit, and I really need to talk about it. I realise that I’m largely preaching to the choir here, but I am feeling a little like I need a sympathetic ear, so apologies.

In late 2025, we got the next volume of pulp detective Jigger Masters, created by author and editor Anthony M. Rud (1893-1942): The Death Messenger: The Complete Cases of Jigger Masters, Vol. 4. This character had an unusual history, having first appeared in The Green Book Magazine in 1918.

1996 was 30 years ago. And it was quite the year for movies. Big-screen extravaganzas dominated the box office, and some movies outside the Top 10 still more than resonate today. On July 3, Independence Day dropped.

The Dark of the Soul (Tower Books, 1970) Here’s another anthology I picked up because it had a Robert E. Howard story in it. The Dark of the Soul, edited by Don Ward, A Tower book, 1970. Cover artist unknown.

I’ve lost count of novels that involve some sort of magical college featuring adolescent misfits plucked from humdrum daily existence thrust into contests between good and evil, not to mention raging hormones.

Neil R. Jones was born on May 29, 1909 in Fulton, New York, the youngest for four children. He has stated that the first science fiction novel he read, in 1918. Was Will N. Harben’s The Land of the Changing Sun, a lost world novel, which led him to the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Arcane Arts and Cold Steel (Pulp Hero Press, December 24, 2025) From History to Writing Sword and Sorcery, Pulp Hero Press has us covered In 2019, Pulp Hero Press published Brian Murphy’s Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, which was notably covered by David C.

Strange Escapes is another of H. Bedford-Jones’s short story series from Blue Book magazine. It is an eight-story series that appeared under his Gordon Keyne pseudonym and ran from February 1938 through September 1938.

Swords and Sorcery: Stories of Heroic Fantasy, edited by L. Sprague de Camp (Pyramid Books, December 1963). Cover by Virgil Finlay Here are two more Sword & Sorcery anthologies edited by L. Sprague de Camp.

I previously read and reviewed Terrance Layhew’s first novel, One Man’s Treasure, which I enjoyed. Now he has a new series with pilot Mitch Mayhew coming from Veritas Entertainment, which is putting out works by several authors under the heading of “men’s adventure fiction.” I’ve seen several of these on Amazon, but have yet to […]

Conan the Barbarian (129 minutes; 1982) Written by John Milius and Oliver Stone. Directed by John Milius. Based on the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard. What is it? The first film adaptation of Robert E Howard’s greatest creation: the Cimmerian warrior who was a thief, soldier, pirate, mercenary and king.

Somehow I missed doing a review of The Pontine Dossier, Millennium Edition, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Autumn/Winter 2023), the scholarly journal of Solar Pons, edited by Derrick Belanger. So I rectify that here. There are six issues out, all available from Amazon.

Mark Frost co-created, co-wrote, and co-produced, Twin Peaks. That includes the 2017 reboot (which I abandoned early on. I’m a huge fan of the original series, but the restart did nothing for me. He also wrote the two Fantastic Four films with Jessica Alba (which I said here, are better than people give it credit), as well as 42 episodes of Hill Street Blues, which was an extremely influential cop show in the eighties.

The January-February issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by Tithi Luadthong and Dominic Harman We’ve settled into a new reality with Analog and Asimov’s SF.

So… if you are an enthusiast of single player RPGs and have not spent any time thoroughly engrossed in this modern masterpiece, you’re either buried under a pile of rubble or not allowing yourself enough time for brilliant escapism.

Peter Schuyler Miller was born on February 21, 1912 in Troy, New York. He earned a Master of Science from Union College and worked as a technical writer for General Electric and the Fisher Scientific Company.

Science fiction fans naturally know H.G. Wells best for his scientific romances. But after 1905, he wrote relatively little in that genre. Instead, he turned his efforts variously to the Fabian Society, Britain’s indigenous socialist movement; to surveys of human knowledge for general audiences, in the style later followed by Isaac Asimov (I read my grandmother’s copy of The Outline of History, and I still have the four volumes of The Science of Life); and to realistic novels, starting with...

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