Sunday, December 12, 2021

TFMS Blog Roundup (mid-Nov thru mid-dec)


The Tales From the Magician's Skull Blog continues to crank out content.

Link: https://goodman-games.com/tftms/
Here are the posts from late Nov thru mid-Dec, with blurbs:

Dec 10 Preserving the Flame: A Review of Phantasmagoria Special Edition Series #5: Karl Edward Wagner by Brian Murphy
https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2021/...
What makes Karl Edward Wagner’s best writing so powerful? I believe he was chasing a dark muse, dangerous and unpredictable, vital and vivid. The one we see on the page of “Into the Pines,” a story which alone makes the new Phantasmagoria Special Edition Series#5: Karl Edward Wagner, worth its price tag: Out into the pines Renee led him. The pines whose incessant whisper told of black knowledge and secret loneliness.

Dec 07: Adventures in Fiction: Leigh Brackett by Michael Curtis
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
Our Appendix N Archeology and Adventures in Fiction series are meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page.

Dec 07: Classic Covers: Leigh Brackett by Bill Ward
https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2021/...
The sad truth is that Appendix N is overwhelmingly a boys’ club. Much of the blame can be assigned to the fact that science-fiction and fantasy writers prior to 1960s were by and large white men. It was a tough club for a woman to break into, resulting in many female authors with an interest in writing science-fiction and fantasy working under either pen names (such as Andre Norton) or their initials (like C.L. Moore). A few managed to find success and publication without obscuring their femininity, proving that gender is meaningless when it comes to writing rollicking good sci-fi and fantasy. Leigh Brackett was one of these women who earned her place in the club without needing to hide her identity.

Dec 03: A Chicago Archaeologist in King Thiudahad’s Court: A Look at L. Sprague de Camp’s Lest Darkness Fall by Bill Ward
https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2021/...
In a flash, unassuming archaeologist Martin Padway finds himself displaced in time, slipping from the Rome of Mussolini’s Italy in 1938 into the Rome of the sixth century, AD 535 to be exact. With nothing but the contents of his pockets, a lifetime of learning, and off-the-charts levels of audacity, he sets about not only securing a life for himself, but staving off the collapse of the entire classical world. Fortunately for Western Civilization Martin Padway – who will no doubt be revered in some alternate historical timeline as Martinus Paduei – has an almost John Carter-like suite of superpowers at his disposal. Padway is no fighter, however, and his power has nothing to do with gravity (though he does happen to spill the beans on Einstein’s General Relativity a millennium and a half early…), but rather consists of an encyclopedic knowledge of Procopius’ Gothic Wars, enough Classical Latin and Modern Italian to pidgin his way through the language of the day, and a pretty sharp memory of High School chemistry. It’s a good thing, too, because all of Italy is about to be plunged into a destructive, decades-long war that will achieve nothing in the long-term beyond a further degradation of civilization itself, and Martin must scramble to prevent, even reverse, the coming fiasco . . . Lest Darkness Fall.

Nov-30 Short Sorcery: Poul Anderson’s “Witch of the Demon Seas” by Bill Ward
https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2021/...
Corun of Conahur, once prince of a conquered people, now pirate and rebel, has been captured and brought to Tauros, the seat of imperial sea power for the Thalassocracy of Archaea. Imprisoned, facing certain doom, he is offered a chance to preserve his life in the service of new masters, the sinister sorcerer Shorzon and his beautiful and terrible daughter, the witch Cryseis. As one of the few adventurers ever to return alive from the forbidden realm of the Sea of Demons, one who actually conversed with the mysterious inhuman Xanthi and lived to tell the tale, Corun is uniquely valuable to the sorcerer’s unrevealed plans. Thus begins Poul Anderson’s novella “Witch of the Demon Seas,” a straight-ahead blood and thunder quest over phosphorescent seas in a barbarian-crewed galley into ruined alien lands with the fate of an entire planet at stake.

Nov 27: Adventures in Fiction: L. Sprague de Camp by Jeff Goad
https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2021/...
Our Appendix N Archeology and Adventures in Fiction series are meant to take a look at the writers and creators behind the genre(s) that helped to forge not only our favorite hobby but our lives. We invite you to explore the entirety of the series on our Adventures In Fiction home page......Did you know that L. Sprague de Camp coined the terms “extraterrestrial” and “E.T.”? It’s true! While the noun existed before de Camp, he was the first to use it to describe alien life in a 1939 article for Astounding Science Fiction. This is one of many examples of how De Camp’s impact on the genres of science fiction and fantasy far exceed his level of contemporary fame.

Nov 26: A Look at James Enge’s Blood of Ambrose by Fletcher Vredenburgh
https://goodman-games.com/tftms/2021/...

I abandoned reading fantasy for six or seven years. I had become bored with epics and found myself uninterested in the new, supposedly transgressive, books. But around 2010 I decided to actively seek out and write about sword & sorcery on my blog Stuff I Like. At some point in my search I encountered James Enge’s old website, where he was offering a free download of the Morlock story “Traveller’s Rest.” Assuring readers I wouldn’t give any plot away I wrote, “And the escapade I’m not going to write about is exciting, creepy and covered with the right amount of nuttiness.” Soon after, I read “The Red Worm’s Way” in Rogue Blades’ monstrously good collection, Return of the Sword (a book any true S&S aficionado should own). My short review of that story reads: “Morlock Ambrosius and corpse-eating monsters. Enough said.” Those two stories led me right to Enge’s first full-length novel, Blood of Ambrose.