Link: Sword & Sorcery Cliche No. 1: The Ming the Merciless Haircut
I am currently re-reading John Jakes’s entire Brak the Barbarian saga, and I was struck by an odd thought. Why do wizards in sword-and-sorcery always Read More
I am currently re-reading John Jakes’s entire Brak the Barbarian saga, and I was struck by an odd thought. Why do wizards in sword-and-sorcery always Read More
Sword & Sorcery as an idea never existed back in 1936. I chose that date because it was the year Robert E. Howard killed himself. Read More
As I sat watching the last of The Hobbit trilogy of films I realized something. We take so much for granted in the 21st Century. Read More
In September 1937 an English Don named John Ronald Reuel Tolkien published a children’s book called The Hobbit. Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, Read More
So, What the Heck Did You Think It Was Made Of? This piece is a condensed history dedicated to a sub-genre of fantasy called “Sword Read More
This piece uses quotes from the Gutenberg version of Grettir the Strong. Available here. Grettir the Strong is a 13th Century heroic saga of the Read More
Uninformed critics have written off the Thongor novels as a bad Conan the Barbarian copy. This really isn’t true. Thongor the character is very much Read More
I’ve been spending a lot of time amongst the Pulps lately. And it begs the question: what is the appeal of these old, flaking, brown Read More
One of the last books published by the Ballantine Fantasy Series (BFS) was Imaginary Worlds (1973) by Lin Carter. I recently picked up a copy Read More
The notion that a monster should prove to be a fraud is a fairly recent idea. The warriors gathered around the scop reciting Beowulf would Read More