You Need Some Strong Medicine: The New Holmes on the Range

You Need Some Strong Medicine: The New Holmes on the Range

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This updated essay, a comprehensive chronology, and a Q&A which Steve Hockensmith kindly did with me, represent the deepest dive anyone has done on the terrific Holmes on the Range series. It incorporates all the novels and short stories featuring Otto and Gustav Amlingmeyer, as well as the two novels and one short story for the spin-off Double-A Western Detective Agency.

I just read the new novel, Strong Medicine, and it was great Big Red and Old Red fun, as always. Throughout the year I listen to various Holmes on the Range audiobooks and they keep entertaining.

If I still haven’t convinced you to try that first novel, Holmes on the Range (or the short story collection, Dear Mr. Holmes), give me the benefit of the doubt. Steve’s a really good writer, and these are fun Western mysteries, with a Holmes underlay. Don’t be a saphead. 🙂

I finish this revised essay with some info on Strong Medicine. Read on, MacDuff.

There are a lot of ways to go about writing a Sherlock Holmes story. Some folks attempt to very carefully emulate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s own style, and to turn out a tale that feels as if it might have been penned (or typed these days) by the creator of the great detective himself. No surprise that results vary. GREATLY. Hugh Ashton and Denis O. Smith are the best I’ve found in this regard.

You can find stories ranging from pretty good to not suitable for (digital) toilet paper. I’ve had a half dozen of my own stories published and I’m still working on better voicing the good doctor.

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In the Summertime: The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

In the Summertime: The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

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This news, which is called true, is so like an old tale that the verity of it is in strong suspicion.

Second Gentleman, Act V Scene ii

Over the past several years, I’ve written about three of Shakespeare’s plays; The Tempest, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Macbeth. All are steeped in the magical and wondrous. Part of the whole point of this column is to force myself to read some things I haven’t already. With plenty of the his plays left unread, I turned once more to his works. While no more of his works are as overtly supernatural, I knew there were elements to be found in at least one or two more. Perhaps, the most obvious is Hamlet, wherein a dead king’s ghost spurs his mopey son on to action. As I’ve read and seen it performed numerous times, I dug around a bit and came upon The Winter’s Tale. While in the end it’s doesn’t near the three first mentioned plays in mystical content, there is some, and, more importantly, it’s a fascinating and strange play.

First published in the First Folio in 1623, the exact date of the play’s composition remains uncertain. Nonetheless, most authorities consider it one of his latter works, probably written around 1610. It’s catalogued among his problem plays, a term first used by critic F.S. Boas to describe All’s Well That Ends Well, Measure for Measure, and Troilus and Cressida. These are plays that veer from the tragic to the comic, not sticking to a single major tone as do his comedies and tragedies. Later, The Winter’s Tale, Timon of Athens, and The Merchant of Venice were added to the list by others. Boas felt the plays allowed the exploration of complex themes in unique ways. That The Winter’s Tale veers from the terrible and tragic to the comic and pastoral before achieving reconciliation can definitely be seen in this light.

The title implies we are going to hear a story, one that might be told around the hearth on a cold winter’s night. Filled with implausibilities, it will draw us into a tale both tragic and comic, but in the end, provide us with a happy ending (more, or less) that we want to hear.

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Into the Weird: Weird Times 2 — Cars, Roads, and Travel

Into the Weird: Weird Times 2 — Cars, Roads, and Travel

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A 1923 Ford Model T
This post is the second in a series reflecting on the world of 1923 as a background to early issues of Weird Tales. Imagine that you’re an American in February of 1923, and you’re taking a walk to the newsstand to buy the first issue of a new pulp fiction magazine. What sort of things will you see?

Probably the first thing you’ll notice as you set out into the street is the street itself, and its contents. The motor car has begun to change urban life. Since Ford introduced the Model T fifteen years ago the price has steadily dropped; there were almost 11 million registered passenger automobiles in the United States by the end of 1922, and will be just shy of 13.5 million by the end of 1923. Cars are registered, incidentally, and license plates have been required since 1918, but most states do not issue driver’s licenses; half the states will require licenses by 1930, and as late as 1935 only 39 states will mandate licenses and not many of those will require passing a test. In 1923 Model Ts are still the most common make of car, though competing models are about to cut into its sales. Famously, you can get a Model T in any colour, so long as it’s black; Ford used to offer a range of colours, but in 1914 streamlined production by cutting back to a particular type of black paint that was cheap and fast-drying. Model Ts do not at this time have shock absorbers, windshield wipers, rear view mirrors, bumpers, or an instrument panel for a speedometer (not a standard feature) or gas gauge.

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A Gender Fluid Future on the Moon: John Varley’s Steel Beach

A Gender Fluid Future on the Moon: John Varley’s Steel Beach

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Steel Beach (Ace Books, August 1993). Cover by Todd Cameron Hamilton

My hot take for 2026: books are ephemeral.

Old news, perhaps, but did any spec-fic writer know this better than John Varley?  In 1992’s Steel Beach, he positively revels in his own unimportance while offering blistering, adroit editorials on everything from indolence to anatomy. But who remembers this book today? And how many remember the name John Varley?

I first encountered Varley’s Nebula-winning short, “The Persistence of Vision,” on a 1988 cross-country camping trip. The Terry Carr-edited Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #1 was and is chock-full of good material, but it was Varley’s story that haunted me, in part because it tacitly asks readers whether they would put out their own eyes for love – and I must confess that I didn’t like the question, much less my reflexive, fully sighted answer.

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Forgotten Authors: Henry J. Kostkos

Forgotten Authors: Henry J. Kostkos

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Amazing Stories, August-September 1933, cover by Leo Morey

This week starts a brief period where these explorations are going to be shorter, for many of these authors have little biographical information available.

In the 1972 anthology Clarion II, Damon Knight included an essay entitled “Goodbye, Henry J. Kostkos, Goodbye,” using the author, along with J. Harvey Haggard, as an example of an author he once read and was invested in, but whose name no longer meant anything to modern readers. At the time, both Kostkos and Haggard were alive (Haggard would be alive for another 29 years).

Henry J. Kostkos was born on June 11, 1900.

Kostkos and his wife, Mary, had two children, Miriam and Maureen. Kostkos worked for Western Electric as an electrical engineer as well as for Bell Labs in Chicago and Ohio. He worked on display mechanisms developed by Bell Labs for their associated telephone companies. At various times, he ran his own contracting business in New York and in Chicago.

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Dark Muse News: Sword & Sorcery Chain Story (#24-#28)

Dark Muse News: Sword & Sorcery Chain Story (#24-#28)

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In August 2025, we hailed the emergence of a second Chain Story project championed by Michael A. Stackpole. This is a Sword & Sorcery-focused, contagious set of connected (“chained”) stories.

Each is:

  • A standalone tale
  • Readable in any order
  • Free to read! (for at least three months from its posting date)
  • Interconnected via a theme involving a Crown

We round up groups every several weeks, but check the Chain Story website for the latest. Here we highlight the latest set of five, Episodes 24-28.

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Why the Hell Am I Running Another Uncanny Magazine Kickstarter?

Why the Hell Am I Running Another Uncanny Magazine Kickstarter?

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Uncanny Magazine cover collage Year 13 (issues 67, 68, and 72). Covers by Paul Lewin, Katy Shuttleworth, and Galen Dara.

This wasn’t my original plan for this guest post. The day before writing this, I was interviewed for the Functional Nerds podcast. During the interview, cohost Tracy Townsend brought up my recent Uncanny Magazine editorial where I said, “Nobody would call a yearly referendum about whether or not your business should exist a stress-free process.” Tracy wanted to know why I kept doing this if that’s the case.

So, why the hell am I running another Uncanny Magazine Kickstarter?

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 4: The Hunter

Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 4: The Hunter

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Parker’s first appearance: The Hunter (Pocket Books, 1962)

What is it?

Parker begins!

He’s angry. He’s determined. He’s out for blood. And he’s got big hands!

He’s walking across the George Washington Bridge into New York, scaring motorists who glimpse him out the window as they drive by.

Later he will decide he wants the money that was taken from him. At the moment, however, he just wants revenge.

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What I’ve Been Watching – July 2026

What I’ve Been Watching – July 2026

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I haven’t shared what I’ve been watching, since February. Nothing earth shattering, but I’m sure you occasionally wonder. So…

Back in January, I canceled all my subs except for Prime (keeping BritBox within that one). RokuTV and Tubi are regulars for me now, along with Prime, and I’ve got my DVDs (VHS hasn’t come back into play yet.

I don’t watch much sports anymore, and no brand new shows – I have an antenna, but no recording capability. I’m pretty content with the new normal. I’ve always been a re-watcher, and that helps fill the gap. But I’m still adding in some other stuff. Frankly, I’m happy without all the subs.

HIGH TIDE

This was a total surprise to me when I discovered it a couple weeks ago. I was in high school when Jessie’s Girl exploded. And of course, Rick Springfield was Dr. Noah Drake. I didn’t even watch General Hospital, and I knew that.

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Into the Weird: Weird Tales, March 1923 (Volume 1, Number 1) Part 2

Into the Weird: Weird Tales, March 1923 (Volume 1, Number 1) Part 2

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Weird Tales volume 1 number 1 boasts 26 separate pieces of fiction, one of which is continued in the next issue. As you’d expect from an anthology, some stories are better than others. None reach the heights of the fiction the magazine would publish later. But a few are at least interesting in their own right.

I’m going to look here at each story, which means this post is going to run long. After I’m done going piece-by-piece, I’ll write about the collective effect of the issue, and how it reads as a whole. But there are over 100,000 words of fiction to discuss before I get there.

Three of the longest pieces lead off the issue. The second story is the cover feature, and the third story’s the first part of the serial. The opener, though, is “The Dead Man’s Tale,” by Willard E. Hawkins. So the first story of the first issue of Weird Tales lets us know right in its title to expect the unexpected: here dead men do tell tales.
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