#Karavansara

[parsabad]

Chehelpayeh Karavansara/ Tabas/ Iran

Photography: Majid zahedi

[karavansara]

Gearing up for Cimmerian September

The Cimmerian September starts tomorrow – a month in which a number of Youtubers will read all the original Conan stories written by Robert E, Howard, and post videos about it.And I thought, why not do something similar here on Karavansara? Robert E. Howard wrote only 21 stories about Conan during his life, and those are the ones I’m going to read.The reference edition I’ll be using is the…

[invitationtoiran-blog]

dosaltaneh Caravanserai - Qazvin province ✌✌ . . . . .

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[tachyonpub]

Lavie Tidhar’s 2016 CENTRAL STATION was among the best reads of 2017

At IN CASE OF ACTUAL DEATH, Kevin Fanning includes Lavie Tidhar’s John W. Campbell Award winner CENTRAL STATION among his best of 2017.

Books from previous years that I read and loved this year: CENTRAL STATION/Lavie Tidhar, Hammer Head/Nina MacLaughlin, The Stranger in the Woods/Michael Finkel

CAMESTROS FELAPTON cites the Sarah Anne Langton CENTRAL STATION cover as a work of interest in Book Cover Thing 2017: An Aside on Diagonals.

One aesthetic trick I think works really works nicely with book covers is the use of the diagonal implied by the oblong character of a book cover.

I’ve made this one into an extreme example but the elements need not create two regions quite as starkly or as abstractly as this one.

It seems to do a lot of things:

create a sense of movement

organises features of the cover into more areas

allows for different colour contrasts without being too busy

introduces shapes other than rectangular blocks

I mention it because I noticed most of the covers in this years list are a lot more centrally aligned – either creating a simple vertical line or implying one by using partial symmetry along the cover’s central vertical line.

Photo: Kevin Nixon. © Future Publishing 2013

Davide Mana on KARAVANSARA writes about the forthcoming Italian edition.

I am very proud to announce that in the next weeks I’ll be working on the translation of Lavie Tidhar’s CENTRAL STATION, that Acheron Books will publish in 2018.

On his eponymous blog, Tidhar announces the publication of  Vol. 11, Winter 2018 issue of The Jewish Mexican Literary Review, edited by Tidhar and Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Cover art: Angela Su

For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Sarah Anne Langton

[skookworks]

Tuesday Night Party Club #10

Artstuff

My big project, at least for the first half of 2020, will be finishing the illustrations for The Lovecraft Country Holidays Collection. It’s an anthology of role-playing game scenarios written by Oscar Rios featuring a sextet of adolescent cousins living in (H.P.) Lovecraft Country i.e. legend haunted parts of New England featured in the Cthulhu Mythos. The project was successfully…

[wildbeautifuldamned]

Osborne And Little Luxury Fabric Sample Book. Karavansara. ebay cheesesniff

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Classics, Steve Tompkins, Queen of the Black Coast, Gun Ghoul

Culture (Legends of Men): The primary professional association for classicists is the Society for Classical Studies. This was formerly called the American Philological Association. Mary Frances Williams, a Ph.D. in classics, former professor, and an independent researcher, decided to attend this year’s annual conference. There, she witnessed first hand how the classics field is becoming a vehicle for social justice (a.k.a. Marxism). The SCS, as well as academics across the country (and presumably across Europe), is accomplishing this on multiple fronts.

  Fandom (Don Herron): Hard to believe it was ten years ago today when Steve Tompkins punched his ticket. Only 48 years old, hospitalized for food poisoning after hitting Burger King, then out of the blue a heart attack. If they can’t handle a heart attack when you’re already in the hospital, game over.

  Fiction (John C. Wright): Many a fan, this one included, calls Queen of the Black Coast the finest of the Conan stories, in part because of its legendary scope, in part because of its lurid romance, it passages of lyrical poetry, its vivid and bloody battle-scenes, the sense of mystery and adventure, the chilling eldritch visions of ancient eons and shades of the dead, the Viking funeral at the end.

The writing excels on three levels: first, striking characterization gives life to an intimate and tragic romance; second, lyrical world-building conjures a vision of a lost age, cruel but not without its savage beauties; third, a deep and even grim theme dignifies what would otherwise be a mere boy’s adventure tale with adumbration of deep time and an almost Norse melancholy touching the brevity of life, the indifference of the gods.

  Fandom (DMR Books): Steve Tompkins died ten years ago today. I and a few other bloggers will be posting blog entries in tribute to Steve, whom I consider the best “genre” blogger of the first decade in this twenty-first century. Below, you’ll find a very concise history of Mr. Tompkins’ life and hyperlinks to all of his blog entries and online essays. This post is intended to function as a one-stop guide to Steve’s online legacy.

  RPG (Playing at the World): The Illusionist in Dungeons & Dragons was created by Peter Aronson, an early Boston-area fan. In 1975, Aronson submitted an initial description of Illusionists to TSR , who ran it in the fourth issue of the Strategic Review. Then the following year, Aronson’s additions with system for higher-level Illusionists appeared in the debut issue of The Dragon. But Aronson didn’t stop there – he made a number of further expansions and corrections which he circulated informally in 1977, of which the first page is shown above. Today, we’re looking at the complete Illusionist subclass for OD&D as Aronson envisioned it, and the implications it created for “schools” of magic in role-playing games.

  Fiction (DMR Books): Hira Singh was Talbot Mundy’s fourth novel; his second and third novels (The Winds of the World and King – of the Khyber Rifles) are more properly part of the Greater Jimgrim Mythos of interconnected stories and we will discuss them in their own time.  We will also be reviewing the Jimgrim Saga itself (those books whose hero is James Grim) in its own place.  Hira Singh was serialized in Adventure magazine in late 1917 and then published in book form by Bobbs-Merrill in 1918.

  Popular Culture (Kairos): Hang out around science fiction authors long enough, and you get the sense that they’re all crazy.

John Scalzi claims that Donald Trump and the weather conspired to give him writer’s block. Patrick Rothfuss and George R. R. Martin have cited similarly temperamental reasons for not finishing their popular series.

The ancient Romans had a saying, Ars longa, vita brevis. Moderns take it to mean that life is short, but works of art last.

  Popular Culture (Men of the West): This weekend, Captain Marvel defied expectations among traditional fanbase comic book audiences who expected the movie to gross between $80 and $100 million. It seemed as though every indication was there that the movie would tank, due to its blatant promotion of third wave feminism—both in the movie as well as in promotional material. However, the justified critics were wrong to presume the larger society of Americans were on their side, and the movie earned $153 million domestic.

  Authors (Fredericksburg.com): AS THE final weeks of the 20th century drew to a close, much attention was given to the question of what had been the best—the best of the century or best of the millennium? An endless flurry of polls, surveys, Top 10 and Top 100 lists were compiled.

And when it came to the best book or best author of the past 100 years, in poll after poll, survey after survey, list after list, J.R.R. Tolkien was nearly always at the top.

  Comic Books (Jon Mollison): Back in December I took the Arkhaven Comics then new online book store for a test drive.  Wil Caligan’s Gun Ghoul showed up in plenty of time, but personal events made reading a comic centered on death and justice too painful.

Still, Wil’s a good guy who deserves support, so I cinched my belt tighter, sniffed and thumbed my nose like a good Mayberry Sherriff’s Deputy and shouldered my wife through a story of loss, revenge, and redemption.

  RPG (Karavansara): The game in question is called Atlantis, the Second Age, that is a game with a complicated history – there’s at least three different editions that I am aware of: the first by Bard Games (when it was just called Atlantis), the second by Morrigan Press which is the one I own, and recently a new edition was released published by Kephera Publishing (I do not own it, but all reviews are glowing).

  RPG (Tower of Zenopus): I’ve been interested in the Savage Worlds game since the earliest days of its existence – maybe before if we’re going back to Deadlands and the Great Rail Wars days. I played and ran some Deadlands in its original form, picking up pretty much all of the books and the Deadlands: Hell on Earth setting and books as well. I dove into GRW a little later and picked up a bunch of the miniatures and books for that too. I was on the Deadlands email list in the late 90’s/early 2000’s and followed the development of the system as bits came out there – you can see a more extensive version of that info here.

Fiction (George Kelly): I’ve been a big fan of Night Shade Books’s volumes in The Complete Stories of Jules de Grandin series. Black Moon, just published, is the fifth and final volume. Seabury Quinn created a psychic investigator whose cases usually involved weird, occult, and supernatural aspects. For four decades, Seabury Quinn wrote stories that attracted a devoted audience of readers. The stories in this collection bring together Jules de Grandin stories from the late Thirties, all of the Forties, and a couple stories from the Fifties.

  Fiction (Too Much Horror Fiction): Pity poor Robert James Atchison. Living in a California town known as America’s preeminent burial ground, where the dead outnumber the living five thousand to one, he’s a sensitive 17-year-old boy with a fondness for poetry, instilled in him by his dear departed mother, and he actually enjoys reading books like The Iliad for school. He may have good hair, vibrant eyes, and fine features, but all that’s lost on his high school classmates: to them he’s a gangly, awkward-limbed, tongue-tied goof who they’ve nicknamed “Coma Man” with an embarrassing crush on Carla, the prettiest girl in school. He’s written Carla a poem and has two scarlet ribbons to give to her. What could go wrong?

  Pulp (True Pulp Fiction): After having hardly any time for pulp reading for a while I finally got a chance to settle down with this issue of Adventure from from Howard V. Bloomfield’s editorial regime. Despite the cowboy on the cover the lead story is a Georges Surdez novelette, “A Head for the Game.” It’s a change of pace for Surdez in that his usual French Foreign Legion protagonists appear here as antagonists, picking a feud with a commander of Senegalese Tirailleurs.

    Sensor Sweep: Classics, Steve Tompkins, Queen of the Black Coast, Gun Ghoul published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[thegoregoregirls]

1939: Il Mastino dei Baskerville

1939: Il Mastino dei Baskerville

 Regia – Sidney Lanfield

“Murder, my dear Watson. Refined, cold-blooded murder.”

Il mio amico Davide, in questi giorni, sta parlando molto spesso di Sherlock Holmes sul suo blog Karavansara, e io mi ritrovo, dopo la pausa estiva, a cominciare l’ultimo giro di film della rubrica più longeva e fortunata de Ilgiornodeglizombi, proprio con il primo dei quattordici film che videro protagonista, dal…

[bovisrex]

Indiana Jones and the Call of Cthulhu

Indiana Jones and the Call of Cthulhu

Linked from my fellow writer Davide’s blog. Roughly, it’s about an Italian forum for Cthulhu roleplayers, but I’m posting it because of the AWESOME picture. I think someone needs to make this happen.

Here ya go…

[parsabad]

Izadkhast Karavansara/ Fars/ Iran

Photography: mahdi yasavoli

[karavansara]

Radio Karavansara #5: Work in progress

Radio Karavansara #5: Work in progress

Yesterday I shared a few photos from the documentation phase of my current work in progress – and I said I was also patching together a sort of soundtrack, as I usually do when writing my major projects. And considering today’s been a good day, I was able to take two hours off around lunchtime (who needs to eat anyway) to put together a proper soundtrack as an episode of Radio Karavansara…

As…

[wildbeautifuldamned]

Turpan Karavansara Osborne & LITTLE ebay missruthie29

Osborne & Little F6693 Granagh Houndstooth Upholstery Fabric 26.5 x 28 Remnant ebay stuffandthings

OSBORNE & LITTLE Diafano Foresta Brown Tan Remnant New ebay  40924

Osborne & Little remnant TROFEO cut velvet fabric purple geometric stripes 23X30 ebay designer7755

[hermanwatts]

Sensor Sweep: Andrew Offutt, The Broken Sword, Walt Simonson, Siege of Malta, Lovecraft Lunch Bags

Authors (The Silver Key): Andrew J. Offutt was a complex, deeply flawed man. A resident of rural Kentucky, Offutt was a husband and a father who supported his family with a successful insurance business, a job which he did not love and ultimately abandoned to make the bold leap into full-time writing. He was at one time a promising science fiction writer. He also subjected his children to emotional neglect, held baseless grudges against various personages, lacked a full emotional maturity and cohesive personality, and held a life-long obsession with pornography.

New Release (DMR Books): Next week will see the release of the 20th title from DMR Books. After publishing numerous excellent authors past and present, for the first time I’ll get to release a collection of my own writings! Necromancy in Nilztiria contains thirteen stories of adventure and wonder with a touch of gallows humor. A few of the tales have appeared before in other publications, but most will see print here for the first time (including “A Twisted Branch of Yggdrasil,” which was supposed to be included in the ill-fated Flashing Swords #6).

Fiction (Dark Herald): It was written in 1954, you can tell it was written in 1954 because it couldn’t be written today. This is a work of high tragedy that is strongly influenced by the Norse sagas.  If you like Game Thrones but would prefer that it be written by a non-sadist that can actually fit a story that should only take two hundred pages, into two hundred pages.  This is the book for you.

  RPG (Kairos): A speculative element is what sets the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror apart from literary fiction. There’s no element more speculative than magic, and it’s become a common term of art to speak of an SFF universe’s “magic system”. By reader request, here is my philosophy of magic in genre fiction–with advice on how to handle magic in your secondary world.

    Lovecraft (Tentaculii): So, kiddies, it’s back to school on Tuesday 1st September. Here are a few suggestions for last-minute rush-orders for school stuff, to arrive Monday. All available now on eBay… The H.P. Lovecraft shoulder bag for all your stuff, robust in black and blood red…

History (Compagnia san Michele blog): A common misconception is that the siege of Malta of 1565 was a one-on-one battle between an army of Hospitaller Knights against an all-Turkish invasion force. The opposing forces, in reality, were composed of troops hailing from a number of locations. In this write-up we will look at some foreign forces assisting the Order of St John in the defence of Malta. According to contemporary sources such as the diary of Francisco Balbi di Correggio, who served as a harquebusier during the siege, and from later historiography such as the work of Giacomo Bosio, the total defending force comprised of approximately the following:

Art & Philosophy (Chrislans Down): Over at Amatopia, Alexander Hellene discusses nihilism, primarily in art. It’s a good post, worth reading. There’s one segment of it that I want to discuss, though, because I think that it somewhat misses the bigger picture. There are two ways in which this misses the bigger picture.

Fiction (Amatopia): The Fall of Hyperion may as well be titled Hyperion: Part Two, as it picks up right where the first book in Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos abruptly ends. Yet The Fall of Hyperion doesn’t merely pick up the story, it runs with it into wild, exciting directions before delivering a deeply satisfying conclusion that actually resolves mysteries while creating a few new ones to propel the narrative into the final two books of the series.

Pulp Science Fiction (Pulp.Net): Ray Cummings (1887-1957) is one of the “founding fathers” of pulp science fiction who unfortunately never got out of the “pulp getto.” During his career he wrote some 750 works, most for the pulps, and mostly science fiction. I was surprised to learn he had written quite a bit outside of sf. His most well-known work is Girl in the Golden Atom. This was his first original professional sale as the short story “Girl in the Golden Atom” in All-Story Weekly in 1919.

Science Fiction (Porpor Books): ‘Cestus Dei’ (283 pp) was published by Tor Books in June 1983. The cover art is by Kevin Eugene Johnson. This novel first was published, in greatly shortened form, as a hardback book titled ‘The Strayed Sheep of Charun’, issued by Doubleday / The Science Fiction Book Club in 1977. ‘Charon’ was John Maddox Roberts’s (b. 1947) first published novel. Roberts went on to be a prolific sci-fi and fantasy author during the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, writing novels for the Dragonlance and Conan franchises, as well as for his own ‘SPQR’, ‘Stormlands’, ‘Cingulum’, and ‘Island Worlds’ properties.

History (Western Fictioneers): Happy National Rum Day! This Sunday (August 16) is National Rum Day. I felt inspired to write an article about my personal favorite form of alcohol – along with some other libations your character would have been exposed to in the Old West. The first North American distillery began making rum in present-day Staten Island, New York (or New Amsterdam) in 1664. The earliest spirits distilled in the colonies were rum, gin, and brandies.

Comic Books (Diversions of the Groovy Kind): Walt Simonson’s birthday was this past Wednesday. If you ever wondered how much Ol’ Groove loves the handiwork of Walter Simonson, just check out any of the 66 (this will make 67) posts he’s featured in here on DotGK! There’s a reason the Marvel Bullpen nick-named him “Wondrous”! Here’s a huge pile of spectacular Simonson masterworks for you to ooh and ah over–then go check out all those other posts to give it all some context–and yourself added joy! Happy 74th, Mr. Simonson! Groove City loves you tons!

Edgar Rice Burroughs (DMR Books): The two defining works of ERB’s career, A Princess of Mars (1912) followed shortly after by Tarzan of the Apes, hit the pulp readership of All-Story Magazine like a bombshell. Nobody had ever read anything quite like those novels. Movies and hardcovers soon followed. For the mass market impact, the movies were more important. However, the hardcovers allowed young, aspiring writers who never had a chance to read the original pulp appearances–authors like Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore and Fritz Leiber–to devour the early Burroughs classics.

  Alt History (According to Quinn): One of the causes for the decline and fall of the (Western) Roman Empire is the revival of the old enemy Persia under the vigorous Sassanid dynasty. This gave Rome a major military threat to the east at the same time the Germanic tribes were growing larger and more organized and the weaknesses of the Roman imperial system (namely how the armies could make emperors in the provinces) were becoming apparent.

Pulp & Comic Books (Mens Pulp Mags): Lately, I’ve been on a Mike Shayne kick. My reading and watching involving that famed Miami-based Private investigator has led to a series of posts on this blog, starting one about the first appearance of a Mike Shayne story in a men’s adventure magazine, “The Naked Frame” in BLUEBOOK, February 1953. I blame my Shayne trip on my new friend Bill “Mad Pulp Bastard” Cunnigham and my old friend, novelist, editor and retromedia maven Paul Bishop.

RPG (Monsters and Manuals): Dickheads bring sexual content into a gaming session. This is one of the fairly large number of things that traditional conservatives and woke types can merrily agree on: don’t bring up the issue of sex unless you are really sure it’s appropriate. And never bring up the issue of rape at all, because: why are you doing that other than to either be deliberately edgy, or be a creep?

Dickheads hog the limelight. If you feel like you are talking too much, you probably are. If you don’t, you still probably are.

Fiction (Chrislans Down): Over on Twitter, Benjamin Kit Sun Cheah wrote a very interesting thread on Wuxia (Chinese heroes) and the meaning of this genre. He kindly gave me permission to quote it in full here since that’s much easier to read than a Twitter thread if you’re not used to Twitter.

Fiction (Paperback Warrior): Using a combination of the names Ian Fleming (James Bond) and Alistair MacLean (Where Eagles Dare), author Marvin Albert (1924-1996) conceived the pseudonym of Ian MacAlister in the early 1970s. The prolific author of crime-fiction, tie-in novels, and westerns authored many books under his own name as well as the names of Al Conroy and Nick Quarry. Conveniently, at the height of the 1970s high-adventure market, Albert used the MacAlister pseudonym to write four genre novels.

Paranormal and Fiction (Tellers of Weird Tales): Six months ago, before the world fell apart, I wrote about the evolution of the flying saucer from nineteenth-century airship to twentieth-century flying disk. Now I write again. It seems to me that the conceit of the nineteenth century was both progressive and romantic. The conceit was that Science, this new and exciting force, could be and would be used to solve previously intractable human problems. Airships were a symbol of this kind of thinking, the belief being that airships, because of their great power, would render war impossible to wage.

Crime Fiction (Pulp Serenade): I initially reviewed Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg’s By Hook or By Crook, and 30 More of the Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year (2010, Tyrus Books) when it was new, and when we could count on new anthologies from its editors every year to highlight a fine array of stories from writers new and old, our favorite writers of today and tomorrow. How I miss those times. Cancer robbed readers of both of them, Greenberg first, in 2011, and Gorman in 2016.

Manga (Karavansara): Hiroaki Samura’s dark fantasy Blade of the Immortal was the last manga that I bought regularly before I decided it was too expensive a hobby, and I did not like the local fandom anyway. The fact that the Italian publisher of the series went belly up halfway through the comic’s run was also part of my decision to let it go, and with it let go of the whole hobby for a decade or two.

RPG (Skulls in the Stars): Operation Seventh Seal (1985), by Evan Robinson. Let’s look at an adventure from another TSR roleplaying game, Top Secret! Top Secret was introduced in 1980 as a contemporary espionage roleplaying game, designed by Merle M. Rasmussen and published by TSR. Looking back on playing Top Secret as a teen, I’m struck at how strange it is: it is effectively “spy D&D,” with a group of 4ish spies accomplishing missions. But can you imagine anything less practical than doing espionage as a *group*?

Sensor Sweep: Andrew Offutt, The Broken Sword, Walt Simonson, Siege of Malta, Lovecraft Lunch Bags published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

[swipestream]

Sensor Sweep: Schuyler Hernstrom, New West, Zothique, Starship Troopers, S’rulyan Vault

Fiction (Everyday Should be Tuesday): “You may talk of cities and justice all you wish.  Tonight, the pagan wins.  My anger will be sated and these 

wicked people brought to ruin.”

Mortu and Kyrus in the White City is a new novella out from Cirsova standout Schuyler Hernstrom, the first in a planned series equally sword and sorcery and far future post-apocalyptic.

Speaking of Cirsova, congrats to Donald Uitvlugt on winning the Cirsova no. 9 giveaway!  Check out Donald’s own work.

          Publishing (Strategy Business): The media and entertainment industry has a long history of embracing disruptive innovations, from the printing press to the personal computer. But the rapid shift from physical to digital over the past decade or so has been truly revolutionary. In general, physical media has suffered a great deal. Printed newspapers and magazines have migrated to online versions, while DVDs and CDs have been supplanted by film- and music-streaming services.

  Fiction (Jon Mollison): Newsletter readers and those who follow me on Twitter already know about my next release.  As a quick break from the Heroes Unleashed Universe, I knocked out a nice fantasy epic that features a gladiator clawing his way out of the arena, crossing half an empire and back, and confronting a derelict empire with sword in hand. Along the way he must face the difficult choice between two enchanting women, and he must learn how to become the leader he was always meant to be.

  Fiction (Paul Bishop): Debuting as an imprint of Kensington Books in 1975, Pinnacle became a hugely successful publisher of paperback original action-adventure series typified by their vanguards, The Executioner series created by Don Pendleton, and The Destroyer series created by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir. Pinnacle displayed long-term market savvy, either by setting genre trends, or quickly responding to popular output from other publishers by creating similar series of their own—which were usually a cut above the originals.

  Fiction (Tellers of Weird Tales): I have read a paper by my friend Nathaniel Wallace, who presented at the Dr. Henry Armitage Memorial Scholarship Symposium in Providence, Rhode Island, in August of last year. Nate’s paper is about adaptations of Lovecraft’s work to musical forms. That got me thinking about other adaptations of Lovecraft’s stories and poems. Until someone tells me different, I’ll stick with Harold S. Farnese’s musical settings for two poems by Lovecraft as the first adaptations of his work to a form other than that of verse or prose. Here are the first adaptations into various forms, in chronological order beginning with Farnese’s compositions. The source is the website The H.P. Lovecraft Archive, here.

  Fiction (Wasteland and Sky): I’m back with more horror for you today! After last week’s trio of stories, it was pretty clear Mr. Paget would really have to outdo himself here to keep up with the craziness. But these stories are not as insane as those were, though a few have some issues of their own. Let us continue the spooky fun with my ongoing look at The 27th Pan Book of Horror Stories. It promises to be an interesting ride.

Cinema (Swords & Sorcery): Jim Cornelius posted today that Mel Gibson is planning to remake Sam Peckinpah’s epochal The Wild Bunch. While I don’t doubt Gibson’s affinity for bloody action, I have, let’s say, serious doubts about this undertaking. You don’t remake perfect movies, only crappy ones that have some cool idea buried inside. Still, I’ll wait and see what happens.

It got me to thinking about my plan to review Westerns here a few years back, which in turn got me to thinking about which of them are my favorites.

  Cinema (Sargon of Akkad): The politics of the movie Starship Troopers. Thanks to everyone who made this video possible. Below are some links if you’d like to want to read further about all this, support me.

  History and Fiction (Karavansara): My friend Shanmei is writing another historical mystery (we talked about her first mystery story here). The book is set on the route between Italy and China at the turn of the century, and is loosely based on her grand-grandfather’s diaries and letters. Looks good. A few days back, Shanmei asked her readers what level of historical accuracy they think is needed for an historical mystery like the one she’s writing.

  Fiction (DMR Books): Clark Ashton Smith was a writer that made an indelible contribution to the genre of sword and sorcery fiction. However, his work is usually associated with the cosmic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, rather than the father of sword and sorcery, Robert E. Howard. In truth, Smith acts as a sort of connective tissue between the two. Many of his characters would not be out of place in say, a Conan story, while the various worlds he created were just as imaginative as any produced by the writer from Cross Plains. As for tone however, Smith drifts towards the Lovecraft side of the spectrum; his stories are fatalistic in tone and the vast majority of his characters die horribly.

  Cinema (Walker’s Retreat): The Father of Battleboars saw the new Halloween, and he has one of hell of a discussion with co-host Dorrinal about it and its context in the wider world of horror films. Well worth the time listening to it, or watching us in the chat.

  Gaming (Niche Gamer): We’ve learned Grinding Gear Games is possibly bringing their massive free-to-play action RPG Path of Exile to PlayStation 4.

The news comes via the Taiwan Digital Game Rating board, which published a rating (via Gematsu) for the game on PlayStation 4.

While a PS4 version isn’t confirmed, the game is currently available for Windows PC and Xbox One.

Here’s a rundown on the game.

  RPG (RPG Pundit): This is a review of the RPG Supplement “The S’rulyan Vault“, written by Venger Satanis, published by Kort’thalis Publishing. This is a review of the print edition, which actually appears to be a combined book containing what was originally two different books (the S’rulyan Vault I & II).  It is a thin softcover book of about 30 pages.

      Cinema (RPG Confessions): Sword and Sorcery became an exploitation genre, rife with quickie production schedules, recycled sets, props and costumes, and written-on-the-fly scripts that checked boxes for mandatory story elements. The only bronze-thewed barbarian that managed to escape such a fate was, inexplicably, Beastmaster, which made not one, but two sequels and then morphed into a syndicated television series that lasted more than one season. Unbelievable.

    Sensor Sweep: Schuyler Hernstrom, New West, Zothique, Starship Troopers, S’rulyan Vault published first on https://medium.com/@ReloadedPCGames

[mischkebusiness]

[twillistration]

Siem Reap, Cambodia