Elliott O’Donnell: Ghost Hunter and Author
It is hard to imagine how big a writer Elliott O’Donnell was in his day. He is practically forgotten today outside of scholarly circles. This Read More
Category: Weird Tales
Link: Careful What You Wish For…
I was recently ruminating with my cousin about how our kids, now all in their twenties, don’t want the legacies we have gathered. Legacies? Millions Read More
Just Add Monsters: Conan Rewrites
L. Sprague de Camp found himself in the position of editor and collaborator on the Conan series after 1951, when he read Conan the Conqueror. Read More
Link: Your Elder Sign Is In My Eye: or, Advice For Writers Of Cthulhu Mythos Fiction
A sign of true cultural phenomenon seems to be that many people want to copy its masters endlessly. Conan the Cimmerian. Sherlock Holmes. Dracula. The Read More
John Murray Reynolds, Forgotten Pulpster?
John Murray Reynolds (1901-1993) is a writer who was on my radar because I saw his name occasionally in Weird Tales or Planet Stories. I Read More
Sword & Sorcery Goes North
Sword & Sorcery comics, especially long-running ones like Conan the Barbarian, will eventually take their cast to the frozen North. When they do it is Read More
Link: Sword & Sorcery – What’s in a Name?
Sword & Sorcery has become a term of derision since the 1980s. There are good reasons for this but much of that derision is out Read More
Gardner F. Fox in the Fantastic Pulps
We live in a time when the creators of Science Fiction’s legacy go unacknowledged. For example, in the 2015 Ant-Man film Scott Lang goes “subatomic” Read More
Link: From a Gable Window
One of my favorite Cthulhu Mythos clichés is the protagonist dragged out of the window by a tentacle as he writes all about it. Where Read More
Link: Hand-Held Thunder: The History of the Blaster
It made sense when Science Fiction went to the stars that the brave men and women who plumbed the depths of space would need weapons Read More