Tor Doubles #36: Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness

Tor Doubles #36: Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness

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Cover for Conjure Wife and Our Lady of Darkness by Wayne Barlow

Originally published in August 1991, Tor Double #36 offers two stories by Fritz Leiber, doubling the number of his stories included in the series. It also brings the official Tor Double series to an end, although just as I began by looking at a proto-volume in the series, I’ll be covering one last Tor Double next which, which was never published.

Conjure Wife was an originally published in Unknown Worlds in April 1943. The novel would eventually be awarded a Retro-Hugo, beating out works by C.L. Moore & Henry Kuttner, Herman Hesse, C.S. Lewis, A.E. van Vogt, and Leiber, himself. The novel is also listed in James Cawthorn & Michael Moocock’s Fantasy: The 100 Best Books and David Pringle’s Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels.

The novel follows Norman Saylor, a sociology professor at a small, conservative liberal arts college, Hempnell College. Saylor’s life is going well, he and his wife, Tansy, have a large circle of friends, his students respect him, and he is up for appointment to head the sociology department. Despite these seemingly close relationships with Tansy and their friends, most of the novel is focused on Norman’s thoughts and broodings, with little real interaction with anyone, certainly not over the important matters that concern him.

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The Bio of a Fantasy Giant: To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy, by Jon Tattrie

The Bio of a Fantasy Giant: To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy, by Jon Tattrie

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To Leave a Warrior Behind (McClelland & Stewart, January 20, 2026)

Charles Saunders, the Father of Sword & Soul, was one of the most talented and beloved heroic fantasy writers of the last fifty years. That he died unknown, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Nova Scotia in June 2020, is one of the great tragedies of our genre.

The thing about great writers is that they don’t stay buried. When the news of Charles’ untimely death began to spread, it was met with an outpouring of grief and heartfelt tributes. David C. Smith wrote the touching memorial Charles, My Friend in December 2020, and Michael de Adder produced a superb comic strip bio for the Washington Post three years after his death. Greg Mele wrote Black Gate‘s obituary, and Seth Lindberg crafted a detailed survey of his most famous work in the Imaro Series Tour Guide. And a year after Charles’s death, Jon Tattrie raised $17,000 to erect a gravestone to mark his grave.

Now comes word of a more enduring tribute, and one that I hope will help the world understand and appreciate Charles’ remarkable legacy. Jon Tattrie, who worked alongside Charles for two years at the Halifax Daily News, has written To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy, which will be released in hardcover next month from McClelland & Stewart.

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The Tarzan of Outer Space: Balzan of the Cat People by Gerry Conway

The Tarzan of Outer Space: Balzan of the Cat People by Gerry Conway

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Balzan of the Cat People: The Blood Stones (Pyramid Books, May 1975). Cover artist unknown

Writing under the name Wallace Moore, Gerard F. Conway (1952 -), produced a 1970s trilogy billed as “The Tarzan of Outer Space.” Conway is known mostly for his comic book writing for Marvel and DC, where he wrote as Gerry Conway and is best known for co-creating the Punisher in 1974. He also has some TV and film credits, including for Conan the Destroyer.

I haven’t read any of his comics but have read the first two in his trilogy, and I own the third. I bought them because they have been billed as Sword & Planet fiction. I suppose they fit, although they’re not exactly typical, being more Tarzan than John Carter. The covers certainly stress that resemblance.

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The Best Vintage Paperbacks of 2025

The Best Vintage Paperbacks of 2025

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Chris Gunter’s choice for the best vintage paperbacks of 2025. Finally a socially relevant Year’s Best list

Ah, the end of the year. When social media — and my email in-box — are filled with Best of the Year lists.

I’m not complaining. I love ’em. But the ones I most enjoy are (of course) lists that include delightful old paperbacks finds. Or are maybe, I dunno, exclusively old paperbacks, since that’s about 90% of my own reading these days.

This year I especially enjoyed old books by Lin Carter (Flashing Swords 2), Jerry Pournelle (West of Honor), C.J. Cherryh (Faded Sun: Kutath) and Clifford D. Simak (City). Not too surprisingly, my favorite 2025 Best of the Year list (so far) has been a short post by Chris Gunter on the Vintage Paperback and Pulp Forum on Facebook, which enthusiastically included classics by Alfred Bester, Keith Roberts, Bob Shaw and others.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray on Dash(iell) and (Lester) Dent

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray on Dash(iell) and (Lester) Dent

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Frequent guest columnist, New Pulp maven Will Murray, is back with more speculation: this time linking about the two biggest names in Pulp. Was Dashiell Hammett a Lester Dent fan? Well, let’s find out! 

The so-called Pulp Jungle, as Frank Gruber once called it, was a densely populated wonderland, at least insofar the greatest concentration of pulp magazine writers lived in or in close proximity to New York City, where most of the publishers were established.

Late in life, Theodore Tinsley, a regular contributor to Black Mask, The Shadow, as well as numerous other top pulp titles, recalled:

“Pulpland seems a strange, purple-clouded island, in a warm sea somewhere far off, where some of the damnedest elves and goblins I ever met used to say and do strange things, especially when drunk.”

Thanks in part to the American Fiction Guild, a writer’s association which flourished during the 1930s, a great many of these writers and their editors convened for Friday luncheon gatherings at Rosoff’s restaurant on 43rd Street. They socialized, vacationed together, dated, and even married. It was virtually a subculture delineated and confined by a common vocational focus.

Others, scattered throughout the country, kept in touch by letter. But not everyone knew everyone else, except possibly by reputation.

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Ghosts and Death Songs on Mars: Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, edited by John Joseph Adams

Ghosts and Death Songs on Mars: Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, edited by John Joseph Adams

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Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom (Simon & Schuster, February 2012). Cover by Mark Zug

Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom has “Inspired by the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs” on the cover. I hesitated about picking this one up. A note on the back said: “Not licensed or authorized, or in any way affiliated with, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc.” This suggested some kind of controversy surrounding the publication and it seems awfully easy these days to step on toes and get hated for it. I don’t enjoy that kind of thing. But, it had stories by Joe Lansdale, Jonathan Maberry, and S. M. Stirling in it, and I knew all three of those could write. So I pulled the trigger.

Overall, I found the anthology enjoyable, and even though it seemed generally marketed for “teen” readers, the stories were far from simple and unsophisticated. I thought there were three particularly strong stories, as well as several others I liked a lot.

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The Star Warses — Part 1

The Star Warses — Part 1

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It would seem my film lists and reviews haven’t been controversial enough, because our esteemed leader recently yelled down from the lofty belfry of Black Gate Tower and asked me to expand a little on my current Letterboxd rankings of the documentary series known collectively as The Star Wars Saga.

Essentially the rankings boil down to how the films make me feel, based purely on that initial hit I received in 1977 aged 10, when my world turned upside down.

These films are important to many of us for various reasons. They’ve dominated my life for almost 50 years, and influenced my marital status (for the better), my careers (mixed results), even my kids’ names (just ask my eldest, Salacious).

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Tor Double #35: Robert A. Heinlein’s Universe and Dean Ing’s Silent Thunder

Tor Double #35: Robert A. Heinlein’s Universe and Dean Ing’s Silent Thunder

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Cover for Universe and Silent Thunder by Joe DeVito

Tor Double #35 is the penultimate volume in the Tor Double series and also the final multi-author offering, originally published in July 1991. A throwback to the early volumes in the series, this volume, although only having a single cover, has embossed title text for the first time since volume #19.

Universe was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1941. Although not the first generation ship story, Universe is a relatively early example of the subgenre and Heinlein’s first foray into it, although he would return to it in the future, eventually published Universe and its sequel “Common Sense” as the novel Orphans of the Sky.

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Doom Pilgrim! – War Claw’s Solo Card-Game-Book

Doom Pilgrim! – War Claw’s Solo Card-Game-Book

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Narrative game books steered my interest into dark fantasy reading and playing. The 1980s phenomenon of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks championed blending RPG elements into the choose-your-own-adventure genre. Although these persist in 2025 (in releases, digital versions, several tabletop games… all susceptible to reviews here soon), the last decade has enabled new forms of narrative, choose-your-own-adventure solo games.

This post highlights DOOM PILGRIM, a narrative-card-game-book by War Claw Games. The company is based in the Czech Republic. Most of their lineup has Print-to-Play options in addition to physical copies (produced by US-based manufacturer, The Game Crafter).

Released in 2022 as a physical and print-and-play game, Doom Pilgrim was awarded “Best Small Game of the Year” from the solo-dungeon-crawler guru Daniel from  Dungeon Dive (see also his his Doom Pilgrim tutorial).  In short, it is a superbly elegant, beautiful game. Doom Pilgrim has several expansions available now, with more on the way. Also, these proven game mechanics have evolved into Arthurian Legend,  Sci-Fi, and weird horror games.

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The Sword and Planet of Andrew J. Offutt, Part II

The Sword and Planet of Andrew J. Offutt, Part II

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Messenger of Zhuvastou (Berkley Medallion, March 1973). Cover by Jeff Jones

Part I of The Sword and Planet of Andrew J. Offutt is here.

I’ve read two unabashed Sword & Planet novels from Andrew J. Offutt, Messenger of Zhuvastou, and Chieftain of Andor. I thought I had a sequel to the Andor book in my TBR piles but on closer examination it’s the same book with a different title: Clansman of Andor.

Messenger of Zhuvastou features an Earthman named Moris Keniston, the son of a Senator, although this is on a future Earth where humans have begun to spread to the stars. He heads for a primitive, barbaric world called Hellene in search of Elaine Dixon, a woman he is in love with who has been taken there — either voluntarily or involuntarily. Since the planet is supposed to be left undisturbed by galactic civilization, Moris undergoes plastic surgery to make him fit in with the humanoid natives. We already know he has been an Olympic level athlete and is a trained fencer.

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