After what seems like strange aeons of dreaming about it, Mark Finn, Jason Waltz, and I (Adrian Simmons) have pulled the trigger on running an in-person Sword & Sorcery writing workshop. Added bonus, we’re holding it in the heart of S&S history, Cross Plains Texas, Robert E. Howard’s home during his days of creating characters like Conan, Soloman Kane, Brikenridge Elkins, El Borak, among others.
Silverberg spent the summer of ’99 signing copies of Dying Inside. 7,000 autographs — a novella in and of itself. He muses on autographs and people who collect them.
Cameras at stop-lights, that is the issue that has rubbed Schmidt’s libertarian streak wrong. Very wrong! He soon spins a future of nanny-state-over-arching-safety-protocols.
I’m not an expert at the art of rhetoric and argument, but even I am immediately pick up on several logic holes, beginning with his fundamental argument, “That if it leads to a reduction in crime it must be good, therefore there should be more of it.” Thus, more cameras, cameras everywhere, in your home even! Then he wraps it up with a little of the ol’ argument from authority with the Ben Franklin chestnut about “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
…
This is a 50th Anniversary double issue… why did it have to be a double issue? I hate to start the review with a petty observation like that, but honestly, this was a bigger task than I was hoping for, especially because the November ’99 Asimov’s SF was also a double issue!
Right inside the cover is an ad for Frank M. Robinson’s Science Fiction of the 20th Century: An illustrated History. Really pulling the nostalgia strings for the older sf! Another item to put on my ‘to buy’ list. 
The Birthday (Arcadia Motion Pictures, November 10, 2006)
What are you doing right now? Whatever it is, stop it. Stop it and watch the Corey Feldmen vehicle The Birthday. Watch it. Right! Damn! Now!
“Woah, Simmons,” you may be saying to yourself. “Where’s the fire? What’s the rush?”
The rush is twofold. Fold First — while this is a belated movie review, it isn’t my fault that it is so late! We are lucky that this move is viewable at all. Forces, dark forces, have tried to keep The Birthday down, to keep you, the peoples, from seeing it.
 |
 |
 |
Some of the print SF magazines of November 1999: The 50th Anniversary issue of
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, and the October-November double
issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Covers by Chesley Bonestell, Kim Poor, and Jim Burns
With the ‘69, ‘79 and ‘89 magazines behind me I prepare to delve into 1999. On the one hand, my memories of 30-year-old-me (30 YOM), while closer in time than 20YOM, are perhaps a bit hazier because unlike 20 YOM, 30 YOM could legally buy booze and did!
Still, I had moved from a naïve 20 to a battle-tested 30. The answers? I still had them, but getting there was going to be a problem. Between ‘89 and ‘99 I had finished college, been the poorest I have ever been in my life, got a real girlfriend, got my first professional job, been in a car crash, and transitioned from taking taekwondo to teaching it. …
I reviewed five science fiction magazines from mid-2021 to early 2024. Here are my overall notes and rankings.
Asimov’s Science Fiction, September 30, 2022
Edited by Gardner Dozois
Cover by Wayne Barlowe
Ranking 1st out of 5
Megan Lindholm’s (AKA Robin Hobbs) “A Touch of Lavender” and Walter Jon William’s “No Spot of Ground” really elevate this issue.
Allen Steele’s “Ride to Live, Live to Ride” was solid, and two trying-to-get-in-on-the-‘cyberpunk’-wave stories, Robert Silverberg’s “Chiprunner” and Orson Scott Card’s “Dogwalker” had a certain off-base-but-appealing vibe.
Ronald Anthony Cross’ “The Front Page” was the only story I didn’t really like, and it was short enough that it didn’t bother me.
Weird Tales, Fall 1989 (Terminus Publishing). Cover by J.K. Potter
There has been quite the gap in my reviews. I’ve been high-centered on Weird Tales. Many factors played a role in this — mostly that it is not a small magazine by any stretch. Then there is the fact that I read it in early 2023, got distracted by other things, and had to re-read it to write about it.
As readers of these reviews know, I don’t hold back re: spoilers for 35-year old stories. New readers, be warned!
Frequent readers will also recall that I often hypothesize on the thoughts and drives of the editors, but in this case I don’t have to hypothesize — my friends, we live in the future and I was able to get the straight dope right from The Grey Eminence himself: Darrell Schweitzer.
 |
 |
The Best Of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly 4 (June 6, 2024). Cover Art by Karolína Wellartová
After gathering the cold fire and the breath of virtuous fish we were finally able to forge mithril and orichalchum into a fine mesh, through which we strained the very aether of imagination and distilled it into Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Best-of Volume 4. From issues #25 to #32 we bring you:
Sixteen stories
Ten poems
Twenty-seven illustrations; and
An essay on the Sword and Sorcery genre by Howard Andrew Jones
It was a labor of love and with copies sent to the contributors and the Kickstarter backers, we are ready to unveil it to the world! Order copies directly from Amazon.
In other news, we are open for fiction and poetry submissions for the month of July, so if you got it, send it!
Adrian Simmons is an editor for Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, check out their Best-of Volume 3 Best-of Volume 4, or support them on Patreon!
Heroic Fantasy Quarterly #58 hit the electronic shelves on November 26th. We’ve got three stories and three poems — a full complement!
“Dragon Tears Part II,” by Caleb Williams. Exiled sorcerer-scribe Larohd du Masiim continues his quest to gather the rare artifacts needed to gain back his lost love, the princess Yadira. Catch up with Part I here.
“Isle of the Thousand-Eyed Strangler,” by R. A. Quiogue. Quiogue returns to our pages with a tale of fantasy south-seas derring-do among the Perfumed Isles. Young prince Pandara, driven to piracy after the Wulongan Empire has laid waste to his home island, becomes embroiled with the last surviving priestess of a cult of the mythical sunken land of Sundramala.
“The Third Way,” by Darrell Schweitzer. A classic reprint! Grion, the faithful servant of the great warrior Mazantes, flees with his master, along with anyone else who can, from the implacable wrath of Garadis and his army of monsters. But their flight takes them to strange otherworlds where they hope to make a most desperate gamble.