Link: Sword & Sorcery Cliche #3: The Wizard With the Unpronounceable Name
The barbarian hero hacks his way through an army of undead to finally come face-to-face with the evil necromancer who has been terrorizing the countryside. Read More
Tag: J. R. R. Tolkien
The Curse of Hemingway or, To Ornate or Not Too Ornate
With Artwork by the Wonderful Harry Clarke, Of Course Certain kinds of stories seem to set their own agendas as far as style is concerned; Read More
An Interview With Jason M Waltz
Jason M Waltz is the editor at Rogue Blades Entertainment, a company that focuses on action-driven Fantasy. His latest anthology is Death’s Sting—Where Art Thou? Read More
The Scale of the Fantastic
The following is presented partly as an explanation of what I see as valid material for this blog. Do you think of Sherlock Holmes as Read More
Link: The Land of Harvey
There is a fantasy realm that was important to my formative years, and it existed in an unusual place. I call it the Land of Read More
Link: The Desolation of Tolkien: Not a Movie Review
First, a little explanation of the title. I saw that one of the chapters in John C Wright’s book, Transhuman and Subhuman (2014) was “The Read More
Link: Sword & Sorcery Cliche No. 1: The Ming the Merciless Haircut
I am currently re-reading John Jakes’s entire Brak the Barbarian saga, and I was struck by an odd thought. Why do wizards in sword-and-sorcery always Read More
The Sword & Sorcery of Clark Ashton Smith
Sword & Sorcery as an idea never existed back in 1936. I chose that date because it was the year Robert E. Howard killed himself. Read More
Link: The Battle of Five Armies: Of Orcs and Epics
As I sat watching the last of The Hobbit trilogy of films I realized something. We take so much for granted in the 21st Century. Read More
Link: Sword & Sorcery and J. R. R. Tolkien
In September 1937 an English Don named John Ronald Reuel Tolkien published a children’s book called The Hobbit. Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan, Read More