Leigh Brackett and Eric John Stark

Today is December 7 as I write this, and on this day in 1915, Leigh Brackett was born.

Brackett is a major favorite here at Adventures Fantastic. I’m not going to let her birthday go by unacknowledged.

Normally for these birthday posts, I read and review something by the author in question. I’m up to my armpits in alligators, writing deadlines, and trying to get ready for final exams (which start tomorrow).

So, that’s clearly not going to happen this year.

I also have been thinking about what to review. I’ve reviewed most of the short fiction that I consider to be my favorites. I’m not going to repeat myself. Also I don’t have time to comb through the rest of Brackett’s work and find something.

So I’m going to cheat. Continue reading →

Black Friday, Adventures Fantastic Style – “En Foret Noire” by Tanith Lee

Your Intrepid Blogger Is Not Dead, Nor Doth He Sleep

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He’s just been busy writing.

I’m completing a nine-week collection course this week. It’s a themed class where I’ll have a collection at the end. The theme is Private Investigators. I’ve got to tweak the cover and do a few other small things, then it should go up for sale. Look for an announcement here soon.

The next collection class is on time travel, and I’ll start it later today.

I’ve also had a couple of other assignments for some shorter courses I’ve been taking. Since time is limited, I’ve chosen to focus on writing that might bring in some income over blogging. But I’m still going to blog. The blogging should pickup over the holidays and classes aren’t in session.

The Parrot from REH’s “Shadows in the Moonlight” – A Guest Post by Will Oliver

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I’d like to thank Will Oliver for this guest post and apologize for taking so long to get it up and for the funky look of the poetry. Formatting poetry in WordPress is surprisingly nontrivial.

Howard’s originally titled Conan story, “Iron Shadows in the Moon,” saw publication as “Shadows in the Moonlight” in the April 1934 issue of Weird Tales Magazine. In that story, a “great parrot” appears voicing a strange cry:

As she peered timidly into the shadows between the trees, something swept into the sunlight with a swift whirl of wings: a great parrot which dropped on to a leafy branch and swayed there, a gleaming image of jade and crimson. It turned its crested head sidewise and regarded the invaders with glittering eyes of jet.

“Crom!” muttered the Cimmerian. “Here is the grandfather of all parrots. He must be a thousand years old! Look at the evil wisdom of his eyes. What mysteries do you guard, Wise Devil?”

Abruptly the bird spread its flaming wings and, soaring from its perch, cried out harshly: “Yagkoolan yok tha, xuthalla!”‘ and with a wild screech of horribly human laughter, rushed away through the trees to vanish in the opalescent shadows.

Continue reading →

What I Did on My Summer Not-Vacation, by Your Intrepid Blogger, Age [REDACTED]

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Officially, there are still a couple of weeks of summer left, at least if you define the seasons by the solstices and equinoxes. But it’s Labor Day weekend, classes have started, and the temperatures are cooler (less than 100 degrees). So here’s what I did on my Summer Not-Vacation. Continue reading →

Singing the Body Electric

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Let’s talk about cycles and rhythms of life, shall we? If you are fortunate to have enough stability in your life, then life will begin to develop cycles and rhythms. For example, it’s August. Summer classes are over, but the fall semester hasn’t started yet.

For a number of years now, I’ve read something by Ray Bradbury (1920-2012) and posted about it on this date, August 22, in honor of his birth. The fact that the high temperatures for the last couple of days have been in the 70s (in Texas in August!!), making me think of fall and October and Bradbury. Continue reading →

The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Del Rey vs. the SFBC

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August 20 (today as I write this) is the birthday of H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). I’ve not had a chance to read anything by him, so I’m going to do something different. There have been two different collections claiming to representative of his best fiction. I’ll survey them here, discussing what stories each contain, where they overlap, and where they differ. Continue reading →

Happy Birthday, James Stoddard

The Golden Age of Sword & Sorcery 1929-1949: A Guest Post by Will Oliver

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Editor’s Note: Will sent me this a few weeks ago. It was right before my wife had knee replacement surgery (yes, I am now married to a cyborg) and at the beginning of teaching a summer class. My ~~cyborg~~ wife is well on her way to a full recovery, and I turned in grades today. I want to apologize to Will for taking so long to get this up. I’m sure what he has to say will generate some discussion, so take it away, Will.

The Golden Age of Sword-and-Sorcery, 1929-1949

By Will Oliver

Sometime ago, I ran across a list of the early Cthulhu Mythos stories, sort of a Golden Age of Cthulhu list. I took up the challenge of tracking down and reading all of the stories in order. It was an interesting experiment in seeing how the so-called Mythos developed during that era. As my interest lies more with Sword-and-Sorcery, however, I began wondering what a list of Golden Age S&S stories would look like. Finding none online, I decided to create one.

Starting with the well accepted premise that the genre, or sub-genre, known as Sword-and-Sorcery started with Robert E. Howard’s “The Shadow Kingdom,” I knew I had a starting point, August 1929. As a generation is approximately 20 years, that would take the end point of the list to August of 1949, or simply the end of 1949. This makes sense in that the date falls right before Gnome Press began reprinting the Conan stories in hardcover and well before the 1960s resurgence.

While I noted Brian Murphy’s detailed definition of what makes up a S&S story, I took a more liberal stance on what was included on the list. If the story emphasized one element (sword or sorcery) over the other, I still included it. Some of the stories had a slight issue with meeting the definition as they fell under other sub-genres, such as portal stories, but I included them if the majority of the story read like pure S&S.

Part of the motivation for creating the list was to see if there were any strong feelings one way or the other toward which stories were ultimately included on the list. And I wanted to see if there were any stories I might have overlooked during the timeframe in question. Finally, it is just nice to have a go-to reading list for anyone interested in reading every story from the Golden Age of Sword-and-Sorcery. Continue reading →

Ambrose Bierce’s Birthday, with a Guest Appearance by Robert E. Howard, Part 3: The Effects of Psychological Terror and Obsession

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This is a guest post by John Bullard. I apologize for taking so long to get it posted. (Family medical issues required my attention.) Take it away, John.

I didn’t get a chance to post this article up on writer, reporter, and Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce’s actual birthdate of June 24^th due to work, but better late than never. I had originally started what has become an unexpected series of only thinking about what appeared to me to be the obvious influence Ambrose Bierce’s writing had on two of Robert E. Howard’s horror stories. I later was struck by how much another Bierce story seems to have influenced another Howard story. As I finally got around to reading another Howard story that I haven’t read before, I immediately saw the influence of Bierce’s writings on it, too. I feel that with these 4 stories, I can show that Ambrose Bierce, being one of Howard’s favorite writers¹, definitely played a role on some of Robert E. Howard’s horror story writing. Continue reading →