The Author With a Thousand Heads: Round-Robins
Doc Savage had an adventure called The Thousand Headed Man in 1934. The Thousand Headed Man guards a lost city in the jungle. This piece Read More
Tag: John W. Campbell
Wan Tengri in Conan the Barbarian
Flame Winds was a Sword & Sorcery novel written by Norvell W. Page back in the Pulp days of John W. Campbell. It appeared in Read More
Robots Before the Pulps
The robot is an icon of Science Fiction, alongside the spaceship, the alien and the time machine. Of all these familiar themes, the robot is Read More
A Brief History of Sword & Sorcery
So, What the Heck Did You Think It Was Made Of? This piece is a condensed history dedicated to a sub-genre of fantasy called “Sword Read More
The Men Who Saved Sword & Sorcery
It’s easy to assume, while perusing through old Lancer paperbacks or any of the dozens of 1970s novels, that Sword & Sorcery was a roaring Read More
Astonishing Stories: Bargain Basement Science Fiction
When you don’t have plenty of money, sometimes you just have to settle for second best. Or you have to be more creative. Certainly this Read More
Leigh Brackett, Queen of Space
Leigh Brackett was one quarter of Space Opera’s Big Four (Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore. These four were actually two married couples who Read More
William Hope Hodgson: The Bottleneck
Horror writers use many techniques to heighten the terror in their work. One of my favorites is the bottleneck. As with traffic jams, the bottleneck Read More
Going to the Dogs – Two Beginnings
This post begins: It’s not often you get to see how a writer begins his or her career. The exception is in wonderful books like Read More
Robot Pulp History in 24 Covers
The first Pulp magazine to offer robot stories was not a purely Science Fiction mag but Weird Tales, which featured the first robotic brain, giant Read More