Showing posts with label Tales from the Magician's Skull. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tales from the Magician's Skull. Show all posts

Thursday, November 9, 2023

Authors serving the Skull meet at Dingles Irish Pub

 


Had a blast meeting up with fellow Sword and Sorcery authors at the local pub. With Andy Fix and Bill Pearce ... we salute Howard Andrew Jones whom we've admired and perhaps even served as Skull Interns. All hail the Skull!

With Bill Pearce who has a story in Tales from the Magician's Skull issue #11 (link to Gen Con 2023 when we first met),

Sunday, September 3, 2023

Gen Con 2023: Tales from the Magician's Skull

 Gen Con Writers Symposium 2023 - S.E. Lindberg Chronicles

Friday, February 3, 2023

Preview of S.E. Lindberg's "Orphan Maker" from Issue #9 of Tales from the Magician's Skull magazine

Reposting from Goodman Game's website:

Tales From the Magician’s Skull Issue 9 is now available for purchase in stores and online, and as always we’re sharing samples of every story in the issue!

S.E. Lindberg’s grimdark fable “Orphan Maker,” dares to ask the question ‘can a flaming be-horned skeletal revenant truly be one of the good guys, and can you trust the motives of a guy named Doctor Grave?’

Samuel Dillon’s frantic combat between otherworldly horrors sets the stage for this latest sample from the Skull’s current issue!

Be sure you don’t miss Tales From the Magician’s Skull’s undyingly cool ninth issue — out now!

Be sure to check out Tales From the Magician’s Skull Issue #9 for more tremendous sword-and-sorcery fiction!

Thursday, December 22, 2022

Happy Holidays, from Orphan Maker?! Dyscrasia Fiction Emerges From the Skulll #9

S.E. Lindberg shown here in intern garb & magical holiday helm of hope +1, tickled with his being blessed with a story in Issue #9 of Tales From the Magician's Skull

Dyscrasia Fiction debuts in Tales from the Magician's Skull #9 with "Orphan Maker."

Kickstarter backers are getting their copies now, right before Xmas 2022. Pre-orders for the general public can be done at Goodman Games - Issue 9 link! Obviously, I am honored to be in the same volume as James Enge, Dave Ritzlin, Nathan Long, and others (the full table of contents is below). This publication builds on Dyscrasia Fiction 2022's appearances in DMR's Terra Incognita and Rogues in the House's Book of Blades anthology 

2022 offered a full year of writing/networking: being the Event Coordinator for the 2022 GenCon Writers Symposium & moderating several panels, debuting on the Rogues in the House Podcasts, surviving an internship for the Skull (which earned me the titles of both "the only named intern" and "intern of the year").  Heck at GenCon, in addition to hanging out with Matt John from RitH (and Deane), I even got to chill with S&S/Weird Fiction guru Jason Ray Carney (who, with Chuck Clark, edit/publish Whetstone; Issue #2 of that has a Dyscrasia Fiction entry too). 

Previous posts captured videos of the GCWS 2022 panels & podcast and more:

  1. The Skull from Tales from the Magician's Skull roams the Exhibit Hall
  2. Moderating Sorcery & Sorcery, Horror, Pulp, and Game Panels
  3. Rogues in the House Podcast (with the Skull)
  4. Conan IP Owner and the Board Game - Playing with Rogues
GenCon and Intern Translocation Mystery Reveal
Many of the GenCon events were captured in a photo recap inside Issue #9. There is also a touching side-bar farewell to the only "named intern" who found himself embroiled in other traps/opportunities (that mystery is, in truth, me evolving from being on the organizing committee for the GCWS.... to being the Chair of GCWS 2023. More to come on that early next year as the Translocation Process completes.) 

One of the best honors of getting accepted into the Skull is being blessed with interior art. You'll have to get the PDF or print for high-res versions, but Samuel Dillion and Aaron Kreader created these for "Orphan-Maker"!



Tales from the Magician's Skull #9 (click to order)

STORIES

Three Festivals by James Enge 

A Tale of Morlock Ambrosius 

Kalx, brazen defender of the city, had left a trail of ruins in his wake. Morlock followed the trail until he passed the border of the city — the line that Zlynth had called the pomerium. By the time Morlock caught up to the brazen monster, Kalx was already outlined in scarlet flames, fighting a cloud of Furies. 

The Raven-Feeder’s Tower by Philip Brian Hall

The skeleton was held upright by a tall stake driven deep into the ground, to which support its spine was fixed by leather bonds. The breastplate covered bare white ribs and the helmet’s visor protected merely the empty eye-sockets of a morbidly-grinning skull. 

Blue Achernar by Tais Teng 

An Homage to Clark Ashton Smith 

Lady Magida had slept in the tombs of magicians so feared that their names had never been written down, walking into their death-dreams, leafing through their grimoires that had long ago turned to dust. When she strode through the necropolises the ghûls fled like whimpering hares.

Pawns’ Gambit by Nathan Long 

A Tale of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser 

The monks howled at this violation of their sacred place, and Mouser saw he had been incorrect when he had thought them all unarmed. From every sleeve sprang a dagger, and they held them high as they rushed to encircle him. 

Orphan Maker by S.E. Lindberg 

“It is her time to sacrifice,” Ingrid explained while adjusting her mother’s hair. “Ma resisted. She escaped from the Bleeding Tree.” She laughed while shrugging. “But her blood is stronger than her faith!”

The Necromancer and the Forgotten Hero by D.M. Ritzlin 

The wound was still fresh, but not a drop of blood escaped from it. Hyallbor wondered what sort of necro- mantical energies were sustaining him. 

The Glass Dragon by David Gullen 

Rhayder staggered grey-skinned from the mouth of a labyrinth of seventy-seven turns wielding a felling axe with a head of star-forged iron. 

ARTICLES

The Monster Pit by Terry Olson

Enter the monster pit! Down here in the pit, we provide tabletop RPG fans with playable DCC RPG game statistics for the creatures in this issue of Tales From The Magician’s Skull.

The Skull Speaks by The Skull Himself


Edited by: Howard Andrew Jones
Cover Illustration: Sanjulian
Interior Illustrations by: Chris Arneson, Randy Broecker, Samuel Dillon, Jason Edwards, Tom Galambos, Doug Kovacs, Aaron Kreader, Brad McDevitt, and Stefan Poag


Tuesday, August 16, 2022

The Skull emerges from Goodman Games's Ziggurat to roam GenCon 2022's Exhibit Hall

This is one of a series of reports on GenCon 2022; other links coming soon from this Table of Contents, to be posted in random order:

·                 Rogues in the House Podcast 

·                 Conan IP Owner and the Board Game - Playing with Rogues

·                 The Skull from Tales From the Magician's Skull roams the Exhibit Hall [You Are Here]

·                 Dawn of Madness Gameplay with Byron Leavitt

·                 Writer's Symposium Overview

·                 Moderating Sorcery & Sorcery, Horror, Pulp, and Game Panels

Saturday, August 13, 2022

S.E Lindberg debuts on the Rogues in the House Podcast, wins award from the Skull at GenCon 2022, BTS Footage

This is one of a series of reports on GenCon 2022; other links coming soon from this Table of Contents, to be posted in random order:

·                 Rogues in the House Podcast  [You Are Here]

·                 Conan IP Owner and the Board Game - Playing with Rogues

·                 The Skull from Tales From the Magician's Skull roams the Exhibit Hall

·                 Dawn of Madness Gameplay with Byron Leavitt

·                 Writer's Symposium Overview

·                 Moderating Sorcery & Sorcery, Horror, Pulp, and Game Panels


S.E Lindberg debuts on the Rogues in the House Podcast, wins award from the Skull at GenCon 2022, BTS Footage




Early this year I reported on the Rogues in the House podcast for Black Gate. Check it out. As the Rogues move beyond podcasts to build the Sword & Sorcery community, they started publishing anthologies including the just released A Book of Blades which I proudly contributed a Dyscrasia Fiction story: "Embracing Ember." With my Event Coordinator role for the GenCon Writers Symposium, I did my best to gather the Rogues and other contributors to A Book of Blades on several panels. We gathered in Marriott Ballroom #4 to record this special session. I highlight two timepoints:
  • 6:45 min:sec: The Skull crashes the party and award his only named intern an award
  • 48 min: I namedrop two friends, fellow Aikidoka Sensei Dirk Domaschko and Master David Silver, attributing them for getting me into the GenCon culture years ago. 

The Rogues on Hallowed Ground (link to Aug 8-2022 podcast episode)
"Rogues, old and new, meet at the mecca called GenCon. In this very special episode, Deane and Matt are joined by Howard Andrew Jones, Seth Lindberg, Steve Diamond, Sean CW Korsgaard, Jason Ray Carney, and *shudders* The Magician's Skull himself. Topics include sword and sorcery (of course) as well as our "top picks" from GenCon."

Embedded Podcast - listen here!

 

Behind the Scenes Footage

  • Matthew John - Conan the Board Game and Rogue in the House
  • Steve Diamond - Horror Writer
  • Sean CW Korsgaard - Baen Books
  • Howard Andrew Jones - S&S Author and Editor of Tales from the Magician's Skull
  • Jason Ray Carney - Whetstone and Professor of Dark Arts
  • Deane Geiken - Rogue in the House Podcast
  • S.E. Lindberg - S&S Enthusiast




Monday, August 1, 2022

Dyscrasia Fiction in Tales From the Magician's Skull sneak peak

The mighty Skull revealed the cover to issue #9 today over in Kickstarter:

 "Issue #9 is nearly complete and slated to begin layout soon."

The cover reveals a story of mine within its covers.  More Dyscrasia Fiction is coming!



Sunday, July 31, 2022

Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog Round-Up: Jul 12 to 29th 2022


Skull Minion of the Thirteenth Order, Bill Ward, casts more spells upon us weary, mortal dogs (via the Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog, link).

JUL 29   In The Land of Dreams: Lord Dunsany’s At the Edge of the World by Fletcher Vredenburgh

I didn’t read any of Dunsany’s stories until long after I had encountered several of his direct literary descendants. I discovered H.P. Lovecraft on the Stapleton Library shelves, Clark Ashton Smith on the foxed pages of old anthologies, and Jack Vance in dad’s boxes of books in the attic. I didn’t know their style had been presaged by Dunsany’s stories of mysteriously abandoned cities, phantasmagorical river journeys, and strange, forgotten gods. I knew some of Lovecraft’s earlier stories, especially his short novel, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1927), were called “Dunsanian,” but it is only in more recent times I’ve read Dunsany’s own words.

 

JUL 26   Ballantine Adult Fantasy: William Hope Hodgson

William Hope Hodgson, godfather to cosmic horror and ghost detectives alike, had two books reprinted in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, The Boats of the Glen Carrig and The Night LandThe Night Land was published in two volumes because of its length — more controversially it received heavy editing from series editor Lin Carter to render Hodgson’s deliberately difficult prose more accessible.

 

JUL 24   Adventures in Fiction: Lord Dunsany (also known as Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany) by Michael Curtis

Some Appendix N authors directly influenced the creation of fantasy role-playing. We see concrete inspiration in the trolls borrowed from Poul Anderson or the “Vancian” magic system of D&D. Other Appendix N writers exerted a less obvious influence, providing more a sense of tone and wonder than any specific element. It can be argued, however, that one Appendix N author wielded the greatest influence on fantasy role-playing not because his works were borrowed wholesale or served to color Gygax and Arneson’s campaigns, but because he inspired numerous other Appendix N writers, impelling them to create the stories from which RPGs derive their origins. Few would recognize the name Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, but many more know him by his title, Lord Dunsany (pronounced Dun-SAY-ny), whose birthday we honor today.

 

JUL 22  Ballantine Adult Fantasy: Lord Dunsany

Among the most reprinted authors in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line was Lord Dunsany, the Anglo-Irish peer who was also a tremendously prolific short story writer and playwright. Dunsany’s sweeping elegies of imagined worlds were both reminiscent of classical myth and the dreaming aesthetic of the visionary fantasists and tellers of Weird Tales going back to Poe. Dunsany is cited as an influence by almost every major writer of the fantastic to emerge over the course of the twentieth century.

 

JUL 19  Fantasy in the Time of Lord Dunsany by Brian Murphy

https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2022/07/19/fantasy-in-the-time-of-lord-dunsany/

When Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Baron of Dunsany (July 1878-October 1957) set pen to paper, he was wrestling tigers and dragons from the air and committing them to paper. None before or since have done it quite like the man known as Lord Dunsany. He was sui generis, writing in an age where there was no fantasy genre as we know it today. Dunsany was influenced by the bible and Greek mythology, old fairy tales, and to a lesser degree by a few peers including Rudyard Kipling and William Morris. But crucially, not a body of fantasy literature. Coupled with his one-of-a-kind elevated writing style, Dunsany’s early fantasy material feels ethereal and wondrous, as fresh as when it was written more than 100 years ago.

 

JUL 12   A Look at Savage Scrolls

New from Pulp Hero Press is Jason Ray Carney’s Savage Scrolls (2020), an anthology of contemporary sword-and-sorcery fiction. And make no mistake, this is actual sword-and-sorcery, not sword-and-sorcery used as a vague descriptor, a marketing buzz word, or a broad umbrella term for dark fantasy or fantastic darkness or pseudo-fabulist progwave interstitial slip-hop ironically-referencing-a-loincloth wannabe litfic masquerading as sword-and-sorcery. No, Savage Scrolls is refreshingly exactly what it purports to be, and it does what it says on the cover – providing a collection of contemporary sword-and-sorcery from some of the best modern practitioners in the game.

 

 

Saturday, July 9, 2022

Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog Round-Up: July 10th 2022

 



Skull Minion of the Twelfth Order (recently promoted), Bill Ward, continues to guard the threshold between reality & fantasy (via the Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog, link).

Read on, Mortal Dogs!


JUN 21 Appendix N Archaeology: The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series by Michael Curtis

More than a decade before Gary Gygax assembled his list of influential fantasy authors and titles—the famed “Appendix N” which appeared in the Dungeon Masters Guide published in 1979—another author was hard at work compiling a list of fantasy stories to introduce to the reading public. Both catalogs would include some of the same authors on their rolls, and it is safe to say that without the first list, Gary Gygax may never have discovered some of the names that helped influence fantasy role-playing. In the spirit of Goodman Games’ ongoing efforts to return to the roots of the hobby, we now go one step further to explore the fertile landscape from which those roots drew nourishment. This earlier catalog was the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series. Edited by Lin Carter, an esteemed author of science fiction and fantasy in his own right, this literary series was comprised of more than sixty titles released between 1969 and 1974 by Ballantine Books.

 

JUN 24 Classic Covers: Ballantine Fantasy

The decade of fantasy publishing kicked off by the runaway success of the The Lord of the Rings produced not only a flurry of reprints of classic fantasy, but also an entire crop of creative, iconic, and visionary cover designs. Ballantine Books launched its iconic Ballantine Adult Fantasy line on the strength of the fantasy boom, featuring cover art as wonderous as the contents of the books themselves.  We’ve gathered together some of our favorite covers below to share with you. Enjoy!

 

JUN 28 A Hero Emerges: Young Thongor by Fletcher Vredenburgh

I have an extreme hate-love-hate relationship with the work of Lin Carter. He was the Chun the Unavoidable of sword-and-sorcery, his efforts still coloring the genre he loved so much, even nearly thirty-five years after his death. His work as an author and probably the greatest promoter of sword-and-sorcery are things most of us can only aspire to, knowing full well we can never achieve his level of fantastic devotion. The Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, the five volumes of Flashing Swords! and many of the assorted anthologies he edited are still books every fantasy fan should own.  That said, few will ever aspire to his accomplishments as a writer.

 

JUL 1 Charles R. Saunders’ Nyumbani Tales 

In Nyumbani Tales (MV Media 2017), sword-and-sorcery great Charles Saunders collects 13 short stories spanning his early career, work that had previously appeared in a variety of publications, from small press ‘zines like Weirdbook and Black Lite, to mass market anthologies such as Beyond the Fields We Know and Hecate’s Cauldron. Fans of Saunders’ Imaro series will already be somewhat familiar with his short fiction, since the earliest parts of that epic were built upon the classic early Imaro shorts that first won the character his reputation. And, while many of the stories within Nyumbani Tales aren’t strictly speaking sword-and-sorcery, there are not only familiar faces here for Imaro fans, but a great deal of familiar ground as well. That familiar ground, of course, is Nyumbani itself, Saunders’ fantastic African setting.

 

 

JUL 5 Where to Start Your Summer Reading

Whether you’ve got vacation from work or school, prefer to shelter-in-place with some strong air-conditioning, or have just recently defeated an interdimensional incursion of home-besieging swine-things and find yourself with a block of free time—it’s a fine occasion for some summer reading! Tales From the Magician’s Skull’s ongoing Where to Start series of articles are written specifically to introduce readers to new (old!) fiction, with particular care taken to untangle some of the more confusing or overwhelming aspects of convoluted publication histories and multiple editions. They are also written by folks who absolutely love the authors, characters, and series in question, and want to share that love with the world.

 

JUL 8 Congratulations to the 2022 Robert E. Howard Award Winners

Last month’s Robert E. Howard Awards, given by the Robert E. Howard Foundation during the annual celebration of REH’s life and work that is Howard Days, in Cross Plains, Texas, is a chance to honor all of those dedicated scholars, publishers, editors, and artists whose scholarship and passion ensure that REH’s work thrives nearly a century on. Dozens of talented and devoted creators were nominated for awards in various categories, but of course, only a few could win! Readers of Tales From the Magician’s Skull, both print and online, will recognize some of those names, such as frequent contributor Brian Murphy winning in the Emerging Scholar Category, and Jason Ray Carney scoring in the Literary Achievement Category for his helming of Whetstone: The Amateur Magazine of Pulp Sword and Sorcery. Outstanding Achievement in Anthology/Collection went to Jason M. Waltz’s Robert E. Howard Changed My Life, with a list of contributors that is a veritable who’s who in the field of Howard Studies but with four very important writers from our own TFTMS: Managing Editor Howard Andrew Jones, and bedrock contributors Adrian Cole, John C. Hocking, and C.L. Werner. The full list of winners is below; to them, and to all the nominees for their extraordinary work, Tales From the Magician’s Skull salutes you!

 

Friday, June 17, 2022

Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog Roundup - June 17th 2022


Skull Minion of the Eleventh Order, Bill Ward, continues to guard the threshold between reality & fantasy (via the Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog).  With Robert E. Howard Days occurring (a tribute to REH who died June 11th), and with the passing of master painter Ken Kelly, the focus turned to the masters who have traversed realms. Read on, in honor of heroes!

MAY 31 - Classic Covers: More Roger Zelazny

Multiple-award-winning and best-selling author Roger Zelazny’s popularity wasn’t just confined to his native United States. Winner of France’s Prix Apollo, translated into dozens of languages, Zelazny’s reach was international and his appeal universal. While many of us will only ever appreciate him in one language, the multitude of artistic interpretations of his highly imaginative stories is something we can all enjoy with yet more Classic Covers.

 

JUN 3 - A Look at Caveman Stories by Fletcher Vredenburgh

That Robert E. Howard’s first professionally published story, “Spear and Fang,” was a caveman story should mean something to the history of heroic fiction and sword & sorcery itself. Perhaps, because it’s not a very good story, it never had the effect a better one might have. But I’m not totally sure; teenage Robert E. Howard already had a sure grasp of the elements that hook a reader craving action and adventure in their stories.

There’s not very much to “Spear and Fang” (1925). Pretty Cro-Magnon girl A-aea is forcefully accompanied into the woods by the haughty and threatening warrior Ka-nanu. Very quickly, they’re set upon by a ferocious, animalistic Neandertal who proceeds to dismantle Ka-nanu. Later, A-aea is saved by the object of her affections, the brave (and artistically inclined) Ga-nor. All ends well and love will bloom in the savage dawn of mankind.

 

JUN 7 - Dehumanizing Violence and Compassion in Robert E. Howard’s “Red Nails” by Jason Ray Carney

Robert E. Howard’s sword and sorcery tale “Red Nails,” published as a three-part serial in Weird Tales in 1936, tells the story of the city of Xuchotl, the enduring, blood-soaked war between the Tecuhltli and the Xotalanc, and the dehumanizing effect of sustained hatred and violence. “Red Nails” engages with several ancient literary tropes, but the one that centers “Red Nails” is what I term “the stalemate war.” By focusing on the stalemate war between the murderous Tecuhltli and insane Xotalanc, I hope to bring into focus a surprising facet of Robert E. Howard’s most famous sword and sorcery character, Conan of Cimmeria: the way the barbarian maintains his humanity through compassion.

First, let me briefly clarify what I mean by the literary trope of “the stalemate war.” Identifying tropes and patterns in literature and popular culture is more an art than a science, but it’s fun and often reveals surprising dimensions to works. Why storytellers hew to these enduring patterns, who knows? Some speculate that these mythic patterns are evolutionary residues, instinctual psychological narratives that unconsciously narrate the crucible of our evolution. Their origins notwithstanding, there are undeniable recurring structures of story that resonate with us, and so storytellers return to them over and over, hone them, and reinvent for their own purposes. Robert E. Howard did this with “Red Nails,” and he did this masterfully.

 

JUN 10 - Classic Covers: Frank Frazetta’s Lancer/Ace Conans

Second only to Robert E. Howard in importance in the development of the perception of Conan, Frank Frazetta’s explosively elemental take on the Cimmerian achieved instant cultural cache and has become the defining image not only of Howard’s most famous creation, but of the barbaric hinterlands of fantasy fiction itself. Frazetta’s frenzied depictions of havoc and battle, his iron-muscled killers taut with violent fury, his churning vistas of bodies in conflict beneath rust-red skies, presented a gritty, dynamic vision of the bloody world of sword-and-sorcery fiction — a graphical apotheosis for a sub-genre that was no longer tucked away in moldering pulps, but instead enthusiastically smashing through the doors of mass culture.

The long-running Conan series helmed by de Camp and Carter was the entry point for a generation of readers newly discovering the original tales of Robert E. Howard’s barbarian adventurer—along with a mixed bag of pastiche and repurposed stories from other Howard heroes.

 

JUN 14 - Classic Covers: Ken Kelly

The world of fantasy illustrators has lost one of its most prolific and long-running practitioners, Ken Kelly (May 19, 1946 – June 3, 2022). From the classic Berkley Medallion line of collected Robert E. Howard to the modern Baen reissues, Tor Conan pastiches, and Wildside/Dorchester Weird Works of REH — and the thousands of fantasy and science fiction books from every major publisher in between — Kelly’s art was a ubiquitous presence on the paperback rack for half a century. Tutored by “Uncle Frank” Frazetta, the undisputed master of brooding sword-and-sorcery illustration, Kelly incorporated Frazetta’s high-contrast interplay of light and dark and sinuous, dynamic character modeling into his own brand of frenetic, physical, and fantastically explosive art.

While many remember Kelly for his work on album covers for bands like Kiss and Manowar, or his equally dynamic covers for horror and film magazines, comics, and even toy advertisements, for those of us at Tales From the Magician’s Skull he will forever be honored as one of the major voices in sword-and-sorcery illustration, a direct connection between our contemporary age and the era in which rediscovered pulps boomed across the collective consciousness and sparked a revolution in fantasy story-telling — both in print and in art.

 

JUN 17 - Lin Carter: Enthusiast of the Fantastic by Brian Murphy

Born this month 92 years ago, the late Lin Carter (1930-1988) was, perhaps more than anything else, an enthusiast. He heard the Horns of Elfland, and they called to him like few fans of the sacred genre before or since.

Author of Thongor. Creator of worlds. Self-mythologizer. Awards organizer of the Gandalf, for whose statuettes he paid out of his own modest pocket. Founder of the (mostly fictitious) Swordsmen and Sorcerer’s Guild of America, or S.A.G.A. Generous with his praise, both for the fantasy GOATS, and his peers and contemporaries. Editor of the esteemed Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (BAFS), which breathed new life into old classics and helped codify the fantasy genre. Frequent contributor to Amra. Capable steward of multiple anthologies including Year’s Best FantasyFlashing SwordsKingdoms of WizardryRealms of Wizardry, the Zebra Weird Tales paperback revival, and many others.

Carter wrote lots of fiction. Most of it was of mediocre pastiche quality, with a few sparkles amidst the detritus. But what he never lacked was a boundless enthusiasm for it all.

 

 


Tuesday, May 3, 2022

Tales From the Magician's Skull - May 4th 2022 Blog Round-Up

 


Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog May 4th 2022 Round-Up


APR 22  Classic Covers: Avram Davidson

Twentieth-century genre fiction produced a number of huge talents that liked to try it all — writing across category labels in blissful violation of what would one day become the standard practice of brand marketing. Indeed, for prolific writers of both the pulp and science fiction golden ages of magazine fiction, casting one’s net wide across the flimsy genre partitions of the day was just a common-sense way to broaden your market. Prolific author of short fiction, as well as essayist, editor (including a stint at the helm of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction), and novelist Avram Davidson stands right alongside genre-hopping giants like Poul Anderson, Isaac Asimov, or Jack Vance as a writer that refused to stay fenced in. Whether in his dozens of undefinable short stories, or his pulpish far-future SF, magic-infused novels of alternate history (the Vergil Magus and Peregrine series), or tales of mystery and weird horror set in imaginary nations of the contemporary world, Davidson demonstrated a roving intellect ever-eager to explore the wild hinterlands of speculative fiction.


APR 25  Adventures in Fiction: Fletcher Pratt by Jeff Goad

The Appendix N is a list of prolific authors of science fiction and fantasy. But Fletcher Pratt is not one of them, at least not in comparison to most of the authors on the list. He primarily wrote historical nonfiction about the Civil War, Napoleon, naval history, rockets, and World War II. So why is Fletcher Pratt listed in the Appendix N and why does he have the coveted “et al” listed after The Blue Star?

Well, digging a bit deeper into his writings and his career, it is no surprise that Gary Gygax was smitten with this fellow….

Fletcher Pratt was a bearded, bespectacled, pipe-smoking intellectual who raised marmosets in his spare time. And if you don’t know what a marmoset looks like then I highly encourage you to pause reading this to do a quick Google Image search of these adorable mini-monkeys. I promise that you won’t regret it.


APR 26 Beyond the Gate of Shadows: Harold Lamb’s The Grand Cham

“As evening closed in they were threading through gorges that hastened the coming of darkness. Often they looked back in the failing light. No one desired to be last. And then Rudolfo, in the lead, halted abruptly.

‘Before them in the twilight stood a great mound of human skulls.”

When we are first introduced to Michael Bearn, young Breton ship-master in Venetian employ, he and his shipwrecked crew are slaves to the Turkish Sultan, Bayezid the Great, ‘the Thunderbolt.’ Bearn, talented, headstrong, and proud, refuses to kneel before the conqueror, the ruler of an empire stretching from the Danube to the Euphrates, and Bearn is cruelly cowed when his arm is crushed by an iron sleeve. Crippled, brutalized, Bearn vows his revenge to the Sultan’s laughing face — and thus colossal events are set underway with the snapping of a man’s bones, and the humiliation of his soul. For Bearn is a man of immense drive and cleverness, and Bayezid is not the only great conqueror in the vast lands of the East . . .


APR 28  Adventures in Fiction: Jack Williamson by Ngo Vinh-Ho

In the storied list of Appendix N authors, there is one name that encapsulates nearly the entire course of modern American science fiction and fantasy: Jack Williamson. John Stewart Williamson was born on April 29th, 1908 in an adobe hut in what was then still the Arizona Territory. Seeking to better themselves, the Williamson family travelled by horse-drawn covered wagon to New Mexico in 1915, where Williamson recalled that they “homesteaded in Eastern New Mexico in 1916 after the good land had been claimed. We were living below the poverty line, struggling for survival.”

This isolated, hardscrabble existence continued throughout Williamson’s entire youth, but his imagination and inquisitive mind helped him to endure. As he describes, “I did a lot of farmwork—riding horses after a string of cattle, gathering the corn, that sort of thing. Working alone so often like that was naturally pretty boring, so I started creating these endless epics and fictional cycles in which I was the principal character—all this done simply as a way of keeping my mind alive.”


APR 29  Classic Covers: Jack Williamson

Few writers can boast as long and as productive a career as SF Grand Master Jack Williamson — this ‘Dean of Science Fiction’ produced scores of short stories and dozens of novels across multiple genres and series during a lifetime that saw him publish work in over eight consecutive decades. Getting his start in the era of the pulps and publishing right through until the first decade of the twenty-first century, Williamson’s style may have changed with time, but his adherence to straightforward storytelling, breakneck adventure, and uncluttered prose remained a constant over his long career.

Williamson, who became a college professor after he achieved success as a commercial writer, is credited with coining the terms ‘terraforming’ and ‘genetic engineering.’ He is possibly also the first to use the term ‘psionics’ (perhaps this was what Gary Gygax was thinking of when he listed Williamson as an influence on D&D in Appendix N?). While most associated with his numerous science fiction shorts and series (Legion of SpaceHumanoids), Williamson also wrote grounded fantasies, even horror, as with his werewolf novel, Darker Than You Think.


MAY 3 Ballantine Adult Fantasy: Ernest Bramah

An English writer with a varied bibliography ranging from humor, to dystopian science fiction, to mystery tales of the blind detective Max Carrados, Ernest Bramah achieved literary success and is still best known for his tales of itinerant Chinese storyteller, Kai Lung. Bramah’s combination of understated humor, familiarity with East Asian culture and mythology, and most especially his inspired ‘translation’ of the cadences and over-refinement of antiquely formal and courtly Chinese into a playfully whimsical English, proved not only popular with audiences, but enduringly influential for the more fantastical varieties of Asian-themed fiction penned in the West over the last hundred years.

Lin Carter chose both Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, and Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series in the 1970s, and had the series continued there would have certainly been more Kai Lung available had Carter wished — for unlike many of the individual works or even specific authors Carter would reprint after decades of relative obscurity, Bramah’s Kai Lung stories have never been long out of print in over a century since their first publication.

Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog Apr 1st-20th 2022 Round-Up




Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog
 Apr 1st-20th 2022 Round-Up

 

Apr 4: Adventures in Fiction: Stanley G. Weinbaum by Ngo Vinh-Hoi

Not many authors can be credited with changing the entire trajectory of a genre, yet Stanley Grauman Weinbaum managed to do so with his very first published science fiction story A Martian Odyssey. The story first appeared in the July 1934 issue of the science fiction pulp magazine Wonder Stories, which was a distant third in popularity to Astounding Stories and Amazing Stories. Forty years later, no less a figure than Isaac Asimov would declare that “hidden in this obscure magazine, A Martian Odyssey had the effect on the field of an exploding grenade. With this single-story, Weinbaum was instantly recognized as the world’s best living science-fiction writer, and at once almost every writer in the field tried to imitate him.”

 

Apr 5: Classic Covers: Adventure Magazine

At its height, Adventure Magazine had a circulation of over 300 thousand and was published three times a month, marking it as one of the most successful fiction pulps of all time (in 1935 Time Magazine dubbed Adventure ‘The No. 1 Pulp’). Adventure gave the audience just what the title suggested; pulse-pounding tales set in exotic locales, desperate journeys on land and sea, western gunfights, jungle explorations, and blade-whirling exploits throughout history. It even frequently intersected with real-world adventures offering true (ish!) accounts of modern day acts of exploration and daring. A host of classic adventure writers appeared in its pages, such as H. Rider Haggard, Rafael Sabbatini, Baroness Orczy, John Buchan, Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, and H. Bedford Jones.

 

 

Apr 8: A Look at Edgar Rice Burroughs’ I Am A Barbarian

If the nickname “Little Boots” doesn’t fill you with dread perhaps it will in the original Latin: Caligula. The byword for depraved tyranny, the quintessential Mad Monarch, Caligula’s brief reign as third Emperor of Rome has been the fascinating stuff of prurient legend and scandalous rumor for nearly two thousand years. A megalomaniac combining arbitrary cruelty with a wicked sense of humor – flinging coins to the poor after first heating them in a brazier, turning the Imperial Palace into a brothel to pimp the wives of senators, ordering his legions to attack the oceans and gather seashells as plunder, appointing his favorite horse to the Senate – this “viper for the people of Rome” is like a joke you’re ashamed to laugh at, or a car crash from which you can’t look away. Separating the truth of Caligula’s reign from the rumors and embellishments is the mostly impossible task of historians – but using it as a backdrop for titillating fiction is the job of storytellers, something Edgar Rice Burroughs’ I Am a Barbarian does with page-turning success.

 

 

 

Apr 12: Where to Start With Harold Lamb by Howard Andrew Jones

It wasn’t so long ago that the fiction of Harold Lamb was best known only as a footnote in the old Lancer Conan books, mentioned in passing as being important and influential but almost completely unavailable. All that could be found of his prose were some late novels and his biographies, and, fine as those biographies are, neither were foundational works of sword-and-sorcery. Today, though, most of Lamb’s fiction is in print once more, and fairly easy to lay hands on, just like the histories, many of which are retained to this day by libraries across the United States. So much is out there now it can actually be difficult to know where to start. You need no longer scratch your head in wonder, however – this essay will show you the way.

 

 

Apr 15: Classic Covers: Harold Lamb’s Histories

What do you get when you cross an expert adventure storyteller with a linguistically-gifted polymath? Some of the greatest popular histories ever written. While Harold Lamb’s fiction was familiar to readers of Adventure magazine, it was his gripping histories and biographies, starting with 1927’s Genghis Khan, that won him international acclaim, and made him an acknowledged expert in both Hollywood and the State Department.


 

 

Apr 19: Adventures in Fiction: Turning the Khlit Stories of Harold Lamb into RPG Adventures!  by Julian Bernick

Here in the Goodman Games world, we’ve been rediscovering the works of Harold Lamb. He wrote timeless adventure stories that influenced a bevy of Appendix N authors, most notably Robert Howard. The strength of Lamb’s tales are tight plotting, crisply drawn characters and rich historical detail. But as enjoyable as Lamb’s tales are, they lack some of the cardinal elements of Appendix N literature and DCC RPG adventures: supernatural magic, brooding extra-human entities from beyond space, and the never-ending struggle between Law and Chaos. Without these elements, what can we draw from these adventure stories to enrich our adventures for DCC RPG? For this essay, I’ll discuss the Khlit stories collected in Wolf of the SteppesThese tales are just a fraction of Lamb’s pulp stories, but still provide plenty of useful ideas for DCC adventures. 

Friday, April 1, 2022

Tales From the Magician's Skull March 2022 Round-Up 2

 


Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog  Mar 2022 Round-Up-2


 Post Links & Blurbs, Championed by Bill Ward

 

Apr 1:  Look at Henry Treece’s The Great Captains by Fletcher Vredenburgh

When Treece turned to fiction, an endeavor that would eventually put an end to his poetry writing, he found his voice in historical fiction, in particular in legendary events and characters, and in providing a realistic basis for them. Among his most notable works is the Celtic Tetralogy. Chronologically, the first, The Golden Strangers (1956) is about the conquest of Neolithic Britain by bronze-wielding invaders. The Dark Island (1952) and Red Queen, White Queen (1958) recount the doomed resistance by British leaders Caractacus and Boudicca, respectively, to Roman rule. In The Great Captains (1956), Artos and Medrodus, descendants of the invaders from The Golden Strangers, fight a doomed battle against a new race of intruders. Together the four books recreate ancient Britain, its forests haunted by spirits, portents looming in every strange occurrence. In his novels he presents events that perhaps lie at the center of the mythic heart of Britain. Alongside Paul Kingsnorth’s Buckmaster Trilogy, it’s one of the great poetic works about Britain’s history, its land, and its people

 

Mar 29:  Ballantine Adult Fantasy: William Morris

One of the most significant figures in the cultural life of Victorian England, William Morris (1834-1896) was everything from a poet, translator, and writer of medievalist fantasy, to a political activist, printer, champion of building preservation, and a renowned innovator in textile manufacturing and interior design. When Lin Carter oversaw the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line (1969-74), he brought many of Morris’ out-of-print fantasies back into print in affordable paperback editions.

 

 

Mar 25: Fueling the Fire of Fantasy Fiction: Gaming’s Influence on Today’s Writers by Brian Murphy

After taking a bit of a controversial stance last week with my piece on the possible detrimental effects of gaming on sword-and-sorcery, I will now take the opportunity to rebut … myself, and offer the opposing side a chance. And discuss the net positives that role-playing and, in particular, Dungeons and Dragons has had on fantasy fiction. As I mentioned in my prior piece, gaming can, and in many instances has, inspired gamers to take up a pen and launch successful careers as fantasy authors. Before they were writers, the likes of China Mieville (author of Perdido Street Station), Cory Doctorow (Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom), and Joe Abercrombie (First Law trilogy, The Heroes) were slinging dice at the game table. George R.R. Martin is another notable author who sings the praises of role-playing, though he had started writing in 1971, prior to the invention of D&D.

 

 

Mar 22: Classic Covers: Dragonlance

It might be fair to say that the Dragonlance series — initially a trilogy of novels written by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman in tandem with a group of D&D modules from TSR — is The Lord of the Rings of media tie in fiction: massively best-selling, appealing to a broader fanbase than conventional wisdom dictated, and prompting an entire industry of imitators. In Dragonlance one can see the beginnings of not only an explosion in shared worlds based on popular media, but also the genesis of Young Adult fiction as a force punching well above its weight class in publishing.

 

Mar 18: Dungeons & Dragons: Friend or Foe of Sword-and-Sorcery?   by Brian Murphy

I’m a long-time D&D fan and ex-gamer who may again pick up the dice bag. D&D is an awesome game, has given me countless hours of unadulterated joy, and I will unequivocally state that the world is a better place for it. But, I don’t think it has necessarily been a uniformly positive influence for subsequent generations of writers. Specifically, it may have played a role in the downfall of sword-and-sorcery.  Note: The following bit of speculation is not an indictment of what goes on at the table during D&D games, which at their best are cauldrons of creativity. But rather, the impact D&D may have had on sword-and-sorcery and subsequent fantasy fiction.

 


Mar 15: Where to Start With Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser

Aside from Conan the Cimmerian, there can be no more iconic image in all of sword-and-sorcery fiction than the dynamic duo of “the Twain.” Fafhrd, towering Northern barbarian, and Mouser, weaselly little thief, form a wonderfully visually complementary whole, and that’s even before you get to their actual personalities. Bawdy and reckless, bantering and adventurous, these two lovable rogues have traveled the length and breadth of a nowhere place called Nehwon, with many of their most memorable escapades taking place in the city of Lankhmar.