What’s For Dinner? The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

What’s For Dinner? The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

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Art by Vladimir Logos

I’ve lost count of novels that involve some sort of magical college featuring adolescent misfits plucked from humdrum daily existence thrust into contests between good and evil, not to mention raging hormones.

Blame Harry Potter, though Rowling was building on the trope, not inventing it (c.f., in particular, A Wizard of Earthsea). She just got wildly successful with it. So why shouldn’t others also build on that success?

Granted there is nothing new under the sun; no one is irked that Maggie O’Farrell did yet another riff on a Shakespeare play with Hamnet. Even so, not to knock the whole dark academia thing, I can understand how some might sneer at yet another mystical schoolyard fantasy.

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Forgotten Authors: Neil R. Jones

Forgotten Authors: Neil R. Jones

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Neil R. Jones

Neil R. Jones was born on May 29, 1909 in Fulton, New York, the youngest for four children. He has stated that the first science fiction novel he read, in 1918. Was Will N. Harben’s The Land of the Changing Sun, a lost world novel, which led him to the writings of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

His first published story, “Vengeance of the Ages” was published in his high school yearbook in 1926, with a second story, “The Meteor of Fate” appearing the following year.

“The Death Head Meteor,” was his first professional publication, published in the January 1930 issue of Air Wonder Stories and is believed to contain the first appearance of the word “astronaut.” He had previously sold the story “The Electrical Man,” but it didn’t appear until May of that year in Scientific Detective Monthly, earning him his first cover.

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Dark Muse News: Reviewing Arcane Arts and Cold Steel by David C. Smith

Dark Muse News: Reviewing Arcane Arts and Cold Steel by David C. Smith

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Arcane Arts and Cold Steel (Pulp Hero Press, December 24, 2025)

From History to Writing Sword and Sorcery, Pulp Hero Press has us covered

In 2019, Pulp Hero Press published Brian Murphy’s Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery, which was notably covered by David C. Smith (link to review) and John O’Neill (link) on Black Gate. O’Neill highlighted that Brian Murphy was one of the earliest contributors to Black Gate, from way back in 2012! Six years have passed since the publication of Flame and Crimson; whereas the subtitle and focus of that was a history of Sword & Sorcery (S&S), Pulp Hero Press just followed with a sequel focused on writing it, penned by David C. Smith with a foreword by John O’Neill.

This post covers the complementary book Arcane Arts and Cold Steel: Writing Sword-and-Sorcery Fiction (Pulp Hero Press 2025, 298 pages).  Greg Mele recently posted a Black Gate article on how this book is The Literary Sorcerer’s Toolkit; read that to learn more about the author.

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Swords & Sorcery and The Fantastic Swordsmen, edited by L. Sprague de Camp

Swords & Sorcery and The Fantastic Swordsmen, edited by L. Sprague de Camp

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Swords and Sorcery: Stories of Heroic Fantasy, edited by L. Sprague de Camp
(Pyramid Books, December 1963). Cover by Virgil Finlay

Here are two more Sword & Sorcery anthologies edited by L. Sprague de Camp. Both are from Pyramid Books. Swords & Sorcery is 1963, with interior illustrations by Virgil Finlay. ISFDB indicates the cover is by Finlay as well, although it looks to me very much in the cover style of the second book, The Fantastic Swordsmen (1967), where the cover is attributed to Jack Gaughan. Some of the experts who visit this page probably know the truth.

1. Swords & Sorcery is a nice collection. It contains “Shadows in the Moonlight” (Conan) by Robert E. Howard, and stories by Poul Anderson (the excellent “Valor of Cappen Varra”), Fritz Leiber (Fafhrd, Gray Mouser), Kuttner (Prince Raynor), Lord Dunsany, C. L. Moore (Jirel), Clark Ashton Smith, and Lovecraft (“The Doom that Came to Sarnath”). The introduction on “Heroic Fantasy” by de Camp tends to piss some people off that I know, although I’m not one of those particularly. It suggests that S&S is purely escapist reading. I think it does make for a good escape from life’s mundanities but there’s more to it than just that.

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Conan the Barbarian: Lamentations of a 35-Foot Snake

Conan the Barbarian: Lamentations of a 35-Foot Snake

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Conan the Barbarian (Universal Pictures, May 14, 1982)

Conan the Barbarian (129 minutes; 1982)

Written by John Milius and Oliver Stone. Directed by John Milius.
Based on the Conan stories by Robert E. Howard.

What is it?

The first film adaptation of Robert E Howard’s greatest creation: the Cimmerian warrior who was a thief, soldier, pirate, mercenary and king. We get at least a glimpse of most of those here, even if in a somewhat distorted form.

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Twin Peaks Meets Arthur Conan Doyle

Twin Peaks Meets Arthur Conan Doyle

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Mark Frost co-created, co-wrote, and co-produced, Twin Peaks. That includes the 2017 reboot (which I abandoned early on. I’m a huge fan of the original series, but the restart did nothing for me.

He also wrote the two Fantastic Four films with Jessica Alba (which I said here, are better than people give it credit), as well as 42 episodes of Hill Street Blues, which was an extremely influential cop show in the eighties.

Frost wrote the dark James Spader movie, Storyville after Twin Peaks ended. And he also wrote a novel, which came out in 1993.

The List of 7 came about because Frost is a Sherlock Holmes fan. Not only is the novel’s protagonist none other than Arthur Conan Doyle and bits of his life are scattered throughout, but there are Holmes-isms aplenty. Thus, the book is a type of pastiche, though darker than any straight Holmes tale I’ve read.

A struggling young doctor who hasn’t yet created Holmes, Doyle receives a mysterious summons to what turns out to be a séance. Really creepy stuff happens, people die, a mysterious rescuer appears, and Doyle spends the rest of the book on the run from a dark conspiracy. Turns out that his completely fictional novel submission, The Dark Brotherhood, exactly mirrors a real group. And as you can guess by the name, it’s a really evil secret organization. Man, don’t you hate it when that happens!

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Military Cyborgs, Alien Plants, and Desert Heists: January-February 2026 Print Science Fiction Magazines

Military Cyborgs, Alien Plants, and Desert Heists: January-February 2026 Print Science Fiction Magazines

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The January-February issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and
Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by Tithi Luadthong and Dominic Harman

We’ve settled into a new reality with Analog and Asimov’s SF. Both magazines are consistently running more than two months late, but both are at least on a predictable schedule, arriving regularly in two-month intervals. Readers more observant than I have pointed out that the publisher, Must Read Magazines, has removed the cover date and Next Issue date from the covers entirely, which was probably a good idea.

They do provide semi-regular updates online, and on March 31st Emily Alta Hockaday, Managing Editor at Dell Magazines, posted this in the Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine Fan Club on Facebook in response to a question on postal delivery.

We’re in the process of switching printers — both because of print quality and the delays we’ve experienced with them. Once we have the contract with the new printer figured out, I’ll have warehouse dates to share for both March/April and May/June.

Hopefully that change will help them gradually get back on schedule. In other news, Sheila Williams continues to recover from the brain aneurysm she suffered two months ago. She remains hospitalized, but her family posts occasional updates, including the delightful photo of Sheila below.

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Sumptuous visuals and brilliant writing in an Indie RPG? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Has it All

Sumptuous visuals and brilliant writing in an Indie RPG? Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Has it All

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Clair Obscur Expedition 33, developed Sandfall Interactive and published by Kepler Interactive April 24, 2025

So… if you are an enthusiast of single player RPGs and have not spent any time thoroughly engrossed in this modern masterpiece, you’re either buried under a pile of rubble or not allowing yourself enough time for brilliant escapism.

In either case, you’re missing out on what was unequivocally the 2025 GOTY.

I’ll work up a proper review at some point but am simply too busy playing this stunning piece of interactive art with all of my spare time to do so now.

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Forgotten Authors: P. Schuyler Miller

Forgotten Authors: P. Schuyler Miller

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P. Schuyler Miller

Peter Schuyler Miller was born on February 21, 1912 in Troy, New York. He earned a Master of Science from Union College and worked as a technical writer for General Electric and the Fisher Scientific Company.

Miller had a lifelong interest in archaeology and was a member of the New York State Archaeological Association.

His first published short story “The Red Plague,” appeared in the July 1930 issue of Wonder Stories. Based on the cover of the magazine’s January issue, it was the first winner of a contest Wonder Stories ran, earning Miller publication and $150. Sam Moskowitz described the story as “more of a well-written plot synopsis for a novel than a short story.”

Miller participated in multiple collaborations. In the early 1930s, he wrote two stories with Walter Dennis and Paul McDemott: “The Red Spot of Jupiter” and “The Duel on the Asteroid.” These two stories were the only fiction Dennis and Dermott published, but Dennis was the co-editor, with Raymond A. Palmer, of The Comet, often cited as the first fanzine.

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A Curious Amalgam: Joan and Peter by H.G. Wells

A Curious Amalgam: Joan and Peter by H.G. Wells

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Joan and Peter by H.G. Wells (Macmillian, first American edition, 1918)

Science fiction fans naturally know H.G. Wells best for his scientific romances. But after 1905, he wrote relatively little in that genre. Instead, he turned his efforts variously to the Fabian Society, Britain’s indigenous socialist movement; to surveys of human knowledge for general audiences, in the style later followed by Isaac Asimov (I read my grandmother’s copy of The Outline of History, and I still have the four volumes of The Science of Life); and to realistic novels, starting with Love and Mr. Lewisham in 1900.

Joan and Peter is a curious amalgam of these interests — a realistic novel about changing class relations and cultural attitudes in England, much of whose storyline focuses on the problems of the English educational system as experienced by its title characters. This gives Wells a chance to explain things to his readers, though he’s often fairly good at enlivening the presentation beyond big lumps of exposition.

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