The Heroic Fantasy of Mike Sirota

The Heroic Fantasy of Mike Sirota

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Journey to Mesharra, Book 3 of the Ro-Lan series by Mike Sirota (Zebra Books, 1980). Artist uncredited

Mike Sirota (1946-) has written quite a lot of books in SF and Fantasy, including some Sword & Planet novels. He’s still writing and is currently working on a comedy/Sci-fi series.

I first encountered Sirota’s work in a book called Berbora, which I’d call Sword & Sorcery rather than S&P. Somewhat later, I found his five book Dannus series, so named after the main character. They are definitely S&P and are listed below.

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9 Short Stories That Deserve More Love

9 Short Stories That Deserve More Love

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The Best of Glen Cook (Night Shade Books, November 24, 2020) Cover by Raymond Swanland

It’s no exaggeration to call short stories the bedrock of sci-fi and fantasy. Over the years, short fiction has been the proving ground for many of our favorite authors. Heck, a ton of great book-length projects were born from short stories. Consider it, if you’ll indulge me, the anvil on which many an awesome idea has been tempered.

But for every “This Immortal Life” and “Sandkings” there are several great tales that have fallen through the cracks. Here are nine stories that in my humble opinion definitely deserve a lot more love.

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By Crom, it’s Cimmerian September! (And all my REH essays, too)

By Crom, it’s Cimmerian September! (And all my REH essays, too)

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The seriously talented Jim Zub jumped on board last year

It’s Cimmerian September! Youtuber extraordinaire Michael K. Vaughn coined the term, in which he spends the month talking about my second favorite writer, Robert E. Howard (John D. MacDonald still holds the top spot). He’s going beyond Conan this year, and is starting out with my favorite Howard character, El Borak!

A month celebrating REH is the best thing I can think of. John Bullard of the Robert E. Howard Foundation invited me to join a panel with Michael, John Hocking, Mark Finn, Patrice Louinet, and my Hither Came Conan cohort, Jason Waltz. We recorded two long-winded but fun sessions, and I’ll share those links here when they’re online this month.

I mentioned here that I read the issues 1 through 115 of the Conan the Barbarian comic from Marvel. And with each issue, I read the accompanying chapter from Roy Thomas’ terrific three memoir series. I enjoyed it and will blog more about those comics.

I have also been reading some Savage Sword of Conan issues from the Marvel Omnibuses. And I am enjoying them in a different way. The black and white graphics are very different from the CtB color ones. I’m finding the adaptations of the REH stories are pretty faithful. I just finished up “The Treasure of Tranicos,” which was L. Sprague de Camp’s rewrite of Howard’s unpublished story, “The Black Stranger.”

“The Black Stranger” is in my Conan Top Five, and I enjoy de Camp’s version quite a bit. The Savage Sword version is a good read, covering two issues. The first one also has an informative history on the story, by Fred Blosser.

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The Best Short SF: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Best Short SF: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1983. Cover by Thomas Kidd

“Downtown,” a short story by Thomas M. Disch

First published in F&SF, October 1983
Read the story in the original magazine here

A waitress notices a very strange customer: a woman who orders the same pancakes and wears the same pantsuit every day. She never gets to know the enigmatic customer, until one day, the stranger appears to collapse and die in her booth. The waitress flees from the restaurant, not wanting to deal with the situation. She enters a department store, where she is summoned to two staff-only upper floors, where she discovers a strange alternate world. The woman in the green pantsuit is there, alive and much younger and more communicative. The story takes place against a backdrop of urban decay and declining business activity in midtown St. Paul, and presents an eerily surreal, but still compellingly readable riddle.

Rating **** (Excellent)

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Mummy Issues, Part I

Mummy Issues, Part I

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The Mummy Resurrected (Halcyon International Pictures, 2014)

Starting a new 20-film watch-a-thon project. All previously unseen, all free to watch. The twist for this one is that I typed the word ‘mummy’ into Tubi’s search engine, and just chose the first 20 films that showed up. I already know this is going to be terrible, and I’m really interested to see if any of the films I’m going to watch will score higher than 5 out of 10. Here goes…

The Mummy Resurrected (2014) – Tubi

Straight out of the gate comes this steaming pile from Halcyon International Pictures, a production company in the same vein as The Asylum, UnCork’d, and Wild Eye. HIP had a go at ‘reinventing’ a bunch of classic horror stories, and for this one they claim it is based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars, a tenuous claim at best.

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Tor Double #20: Harry Turtledove’s The Pugnacious Peacekeeper and L. Sprague de Camp’s The Wheels of If

Tor Double #20: Harry Turtledove’s The Pugnacious Peacekeeper and L. Sprague de Camp’s The Wheels of If

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Cover for The Pugnacious Peacekeeper and The Wheels of If by Joe Burleson

While the eighteenth volume of the series included C.L. Moore’s Vintage Season and Robert Silverberg’s In Another Country, which takes place at the same time, this volume includes a story and an actual sequel. It also includes the first original story in the series (Silverberg’s story appeared in IASFM nearly a year before appearing in this story). From a production point of view, this is also the first volume that does not have an embossed cover.

The Wheels of If was originally published in Unknown Fantasy Fiction in October, 1940. The story is an alternate history tale that follows Allister Park. Park is a prosecutor in a world which seems to be our own. His current goal is to successfully prosecute the Antonini gang. He sees the successful prosecution as a stepping stone to being nominated for the position of District Attorney for the County of New York. However, when he awoke on Monday, April 11, it was clear that something was different. Park suddenly had a moustache and the New York in which he found himself was not the New York in which he was familiar.

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Goth Chick News: “The Season” Approaches and Midnight Syndicate is Celebrating

Goth Chick News: “The Season” Approaches and Midnight Syndicate is Celebrating

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The summer sun may still be baking us alive, but the haunt world clearly didn’t get the memo, because my inbox just lit up with juicy updates from none other than Edward Douglas of Midnight Syndicate. If you’ve ever wandered through a haunted attraction worth its cobwebs or spent any amount of time here at GCN, then you’ve heard of their work. Edward Douglas and Gavin Goszka have been crafting the gothic, orchestral soundtracks of our nightmares for nearly three decades, and this month, they’re unveiling something truly historic.

For the very first time in their career, Midnight Syndicate has composed a “custom score for a haunted attraction,” and not just any attraction. They’re the sonic architects behind Universal Horror Unleashed, Universal’s first permanent horror experience, which opened earlier this month in Las Vegas at AREA15.

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Manly Wade Wellman, Part II: Hok the Mighty

Manly Wade Wellman, Part II: Hok the Mighty

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Planet Stories #30: Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, by
Manly Wade Wellman (Paizo Publishing, March 2011). Cover by Kieran Yanner

Wellman created his character Hok the Mighty in 1939 and wrote several follow up stories with the character. In 2011, Planet Stories released a “complete” Hok the Mighty collection called Battle in the Dawn, with a cover by Kieran Yanner. The character as Yanner imagined it is shown here and makes me think of Brak the Barbarian.

Despite that image, the stories are not sword & sorcery but what I call “Caveman” fiction. Hok is a Cro-Magnon, an early Homo sapiens. He is wandering north in search of new hunting grounds and comes into contact with the Neanderthals (beast-men) living there. The result is a war between true humans and the sub humans, and Hok leads the way.

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K-Pop Demon Hunters: A Lesson

K-Pop Demon Hunters: A Lesson

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Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

If you haven’t heard of Netflix’ surprise movie sensation, I almost envy you. This movie is everywhere. It’s a phenomenal hit; becoming Netflix’ second-most viewed movie and has its songs everywhere on the Billboard top 10. The song Golden has hit the charts at number 1 in many places. It even, this weekend just passed, did something I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. It enjoyed a theatrical release just over two months from its initial release on the aforementioned streaming platform. I learnt about it too late to acquire tickets, and I’m quite sad about it.

I watched it. I loved it. I have already reviewed it, so you won’t be getting a rehashing of a review from me here. Instead, I want to talk about what K-Pop Demon Hunters says about original content, audiences, and how wrong some decision makers are about both.

There may be some spoilers. There definitely is at least one piping hot take. Let’s go.

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What I’ve Been Listening To: August, 2025

What I’ve Been Listening To: August, 2025

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What I’ve Been Listening To is back for another installment. Audiobooks are omnipresent in my life now. Work, home, car, walking, bedtime: I’m constantly listening to them. Often something I’ve listened to before, which lets my mind half-focus to no ill effect. But I’m still listening.

Some recent plays – all Audible, as I need to get Hoopla set up on my ‘new’ used phone. I have listened to five different Bruce Campbell projects recently, so that’s probably another post.

MIDDLEBRIDGE MYSTERIES

I wrote about Mistletoe Murders, which is an Audible original series. It’s like a Hallmark mystery movie. Emily Lane runs a Christmas-themed store, but she has a secret past. Of course, there’s a local cop boyfriend, with a daughter named Violet.

I like the series, and they turned it into a Hallmark TV series as well, though I’ve not seen that yet. It uses different actors, which I’m not too enthused about.

Well, Violet was trying to get into college at the end of season three, and she did. So, Anna Cathcart is back and starring in Violet’s freshman year in criminal justice studies. Her professor is played by Eric McCormack (Will and Grace). I was a big fan of his show Perception and he’s good as a supporting character here.

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