Tag Archives: Howard Andrew Jones

Burroughs and Lamb

Today (September 1) is the birthday of two literary giants, Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) and Harold Lamb (1892-1962). Continue reading

Tales From the Magician’s Skull Premieres

Tales From the Magician’s Skull
Howard Andrew Jones, ed.
Goodman Games
Bedsheet size magazine, $14.99

If you’ve followed this blog, you may remember me mentioning the Kickstarter for this publication.  Well, it’s out now, and the second issue is in production.

I think the editor Howard Andrew Jones and his team have set the bar pretty high with this inaugural issue.  It’s modeled after the old pulp magazines.  I think this approach is a success.  The illustrations, fan club index, and the editorial by Jones all complement the most important aspect of the magazine, the stories. Continue reading

Tales From the Magician’s Skull Kickstarter Launches

The Kickstarter for a new sword and sorcery magazine has launched.  Tales From the Magician’s Skull will be edited by Howard Andrew Jones and promises to be one of the top venues for short S&S fiction.

I’ve been excited about this ever since Howard announced it.  This is a print periodical that harkens back to the days of the pulps.  I’ve pledged it.

The table of contents for the first issue has been posted on the Kickstarter page. Check it out.  This is gonna be fantastic.

A Plethora of Birthdays of Giants

There are a number of birthdays today in the fields of the fantastic, including but not limited to C. J. Cherryh (1942), Timothy Zahn (1951), and S. Andrew Swann (1966).  But there are two writers born on this date (September 1) against whom all others with birthdays today pale in comparison. Continue reading

Brackett and Bradbury: “Lorelei of the Red Mist”

Planet Stories - Lorelei of the Red MistThis is a unique item.  The only collaboration between two great science fiction authors, Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury.  Here’s how it came about:

Both authors were living in the Los Angeles area in the 1940s, and both had been working hard to develop their craft as writers.  Both were regulars in Planet Stories at the time.  They were friends who had both been mentored by Henry Kuttner.  They used to meet once a week to read and critique each other’s work.

no good from a corpseBrackett had sold some detective short stories as well as one novel, No Good From a Corpse.  The novel caught the attention of movie producer Howard Hawks, who decided he wanted Brackett to work on the screenplay for his next project.  She was approximately halfway through a novellette she was writing for Planet Stories that was set on Venus (More about Brackett’s Venus in a bit.) when she got a call from Hawks, or more probably his secretary.  Which is how Brackett launched her screenwriting career by coauthoring with William Faulkner the script for Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.  How freakin’ cool is that? Continue reading

In the Deep and Dark December

[cue Simon and Garfunkle]

I’m not a huge Simon and Grafunkle fan, but I couldn’t help but steal the title of this post from “I am a Rock”.  Here are my reading/writing/blogging plans for the last month of the year.

Leigh Brackett

Leigh Brackett

The big thing is that Leigh Brackett’s birthday is next Monday, December 7.  It’s her centennial, and I’ll be focusing a lot on her work this month.  I’m not the only one.  Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward will be discussing “The Moon the Vanished”, one of her novellas set on a swampy Venus next Monday on Howard’s blog.  Click here for details and join the discussion.  I’m not going to be discussing that particular story here, but I will take some detailed looks at some others.  I’m probably going to start with “Lorelei of the Red Mist”, which she began and Ray Bradbury finished when Howard Hawks offered her a job writing the screenplay to Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep with William Faulkner.  You can get electronic copies of both stories in Swamps of Venus from Baen ($4), or get the Solar System bundle for $20. Continue reading

A Review of Ghost in the Cogs

s786647801383493004_p17_i2_w640Ghost in the Cogs
Scott Gable and C. Dombrowski, eds.
Broken Eye Books
Paper $19.99
Ebook $6.99

I got an email a couple of weeks ago from Scott Gable asking if I would be interested in reviewing Ghost in the Cogs.  I had a lot of commitments on my plate (still do), but since the last steampunk anthology I’d read and the last ghost story anthology I’d read had both been quite enjoyable, I decided to give it a go.  This blending of genres seemed a natural combination, and it’s not one I’ve seen done a lot.  Now, I’ve not read a large amount of steampunk, primiarily because there’s so much of it and I only have so much time.  It seems I made the right decision to read Ghost in the Cogs.

There are 22 stories in this anthology.  I’m not going to attempt to provide a quick synopsis of all of them.  I’ll do what I usually do and highlight the ones I liked best.  But I want to make some general remarks before I do.   Continue reading

Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Start Conan Read Through

If you aren’t reading Howard Andrew Jones’ blog, then you’ve been missing some good posts.  He and Bill Ward have been reading through works by major fantasy authors for about a year now and discussing them.  They started with a couple of collections by Lord Dunsany and then moved on to Swords Against Darkness and Swords in the Mist, two Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser collections by Fritz Leiber.  Each week they’ve discussed the story they’ve read and invited anyone interested in doing so to read along with them.

Today Howard postedComing of Conan a wrap-up of Swords in the Mist and a discussion of their next project.  This will be The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian.  Today’s post was mostly about Conan, not so much about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.  Next week they discuss Howard’s essay “The Hyborian Age” before launching into the stories themselves.

If you’re a Howard fan, or just a Conan fan, you should check it out.

The Next Few Days, Plus a Kickstarter of Interest

Classes start today; I’ve got one from11:00 – 1:50.  On top of that, my wife is having shoulder surgery tomorrow morning.  Nothing big, i.e., not a rotator cuff, but I’ll be tied up with that and won’t be at work.  Depending on how long her parents stay and if her painkillers are working, I may or may not be at work on Friday.  (It hey are here and the drugs aren’t working, I’m coming in to work.)  Anyway, I might not be very active online until next week.

Farewell-200x300In the meantime, there’s a new Kickstarter readers of this blog might be interested in.  It’s called, Farewell, Something Lovely.  The title is a play on Raymond Chandler’s novel, Farewell, My Lovely.  It’s a collection of hardboiled sword and sorcery tales by Fraser Ronald.  Since S&S and hardboiled/noir are two of my three favorite subgenres, I’m looking forward to this one.

And if you haven’t been following the discussion at Howard Andrew Jones’ blog on the relationship between hardboiled and sword and sorcery, start here.