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 Land. The 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.
