Dark Worlds Magazine #5 Arrives
Dark Worlds #5 (Summer 2010) is online at last.
Fans of the magazine will notice a few changes. First, it’s now in quarto size (7 1/2″ x 10″) instead of 6″ x 9″ trade paper size (to make it more like an old pulp) and the cover is a wraparound.
The cover illustrates “Of Kings and Servants,” and is painted by M. D. Jackson. The interior pages have a new graphic look as well.
This issue features the work of C. J. Burch (author of The Star of Kaleel – a novel reviewed in this issue). C. J. offers the Tiana Dumond and Krystyn Hamerskjold novella “Of Kings and Servants,” a Sword & Sorcery tale of undead pirates and evil magicians. Cover artist M. D. Jackson also did the illustrations.
Have you ever woken up in an extremely good mood, found you were left enough hot water for a skin-peeling shower, stepped on the scale and found it down two pounds in spite of the bacchanalia of the night before? Have you ever leapt out of bed feeling euphoric and thought, “I really love my life?”
“The city is a different place in the daylight, bright banners waving from towers, houses likewise bright with hangings and with designs painted on walls and roofs. The ships of the river unload by day, and the streets are filled with the babble of tongues, while traders and officials and barbarians and city wives all haggle together. It is a place of sharp fish smells and strange incense and leather and wet canvas and unwashed rivermen who bring outlandish beasts from the villages high in the mountains, near the birthplace of the river.”
Under the Mountain (1979)
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In 1998, American writer James Stoddard published his debut novel, The High House, and two years later followed it with a sequel, The False House. They’re two of the more remarkable fantasies I know. 
Collector prices are not always rational, as I think most collectors know. They can be fueled by hysteria. As many collectors have noticed, Clive Barker futures are very soft these days. Only the first British hardcovers of the Books of Blood and the British first of The Damnation Game have retained their value. There was a time, within a year or so of publication, when the advance galley of the American edition of Weaveworld could easily bring a hundred dollars. The last time I sold one, I bought it for $1.00 and got $10.00; but that was years ago. Nowadays you would be lucky to get five dollars for a copy. American firsts of Barker, or even galleys of same, are virtually worthless.
D&D in space. It’s an idea that has been around for a long while in the form of TSR/WotC’s Spelljammer.
I’m on vacation, but for the one or two (and I’m probably overestimating) of you whose Saturday is not complete without something from me in this space, you can read my