Jared Shurin's Blog, page 121
June 11, 2013
When Dreams of Yith Went to The Swap Hole
Rex Weldon was a pseudonym for Duane Weldon Rimel, a personal friend of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and other writers of the "Lovecraft Circle".
Mr. Rimel was the editor (with Francis Towner Laney) of The Acolyte, the first Lovecraft-related amateur magazine.He also contributed to some of the earliest fanzines, includingFantasy Fan.
Rimel's short story,"The Music of the Stars", considered one of the key contributions to the making of the Cthulhu Mythos.
His Mythos poetry, "The Dream...
June 10, 2013
50 Essential Epic Fantasies (Part 2: 1982 - 2013)
The latter half of my picks for "Essential" Epic Fantasies. You can find the first 25 - and a bit of explanation - here.
A quick reminder that the the rules are as follows:
No more than one bookor seriesfrom each author. For example, J.R. R. Tolkien could go in forThe Hobbitor The Lord of the Ringsseries, but not both.
No collections or anthologies.
You can only list booksthat you have read.
Definitions of "essential", "epic" and "fantasy" are left open for interpretation.
Don't forget to c...
June 7, 2013
50 Essential Epic Fantasies (Part 1: 8th Century BC - 1982)
Liz Bourke, Justin Landon,Tansy Rayner Roberts and I have challenged one another to write and compare our lists of "Essential" Epic Fantasies. The result is amulti-blogger liststravaganza!(For a previous challenge with SF, see here.)
The
rules are as follows:
No more than one bookor seriesfrom
each author. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien could go in forThe
Hobbitor The Lord of the Ringsseries, but not both.
No anthologies.
You can only list booksthat you have
read.
Definitions of "essential",
"e...
June 6, 2013
The Lowest Heaven - One week to go...
Only one week until The Lowest Heaven comes out!
After a night of seriously weird dreams (the printer had interpreted "matt varnish" as "fuzzy"), the limited edition has shown up and is... well... lovely. Also? Huge. I'm not sure why our books keep growing. But at 350 pages and 100,000 words, The Lowest Heaven is the biggest yet.
The limited edition is launched next Thursday night, 13 June. (An appropriate verb, given that the book celebrates the amazing astrophotography of the Royal Observa...
June 5, 2013
Competition: Win exclusive JOYLAND art!
So... Stephen King's carny-pulp noir,Joyland,is coming out this week. You may have heard. I, for one, haven't been talking about it at all. Nosiree.
Still, being a shameless fan has its perks, and here's today's: we're hosting a cool (and very easy) competition with an exclusive Joylandprize.
Unlike most carnival games, this one really iseasy. Here's how it goes:
To be entered into today's drawing to win a canvas print of Glen Orbik's gorgeous cover art for Joyland, all you need to do is cop...
June 4, 2013
New Releases: Joyland by Stephen King
This is the latest installment in our scheme to review each and every Hard Case Crime publication, one every week. You can follow along here. Last week, we fought Communists with Donald Hamilton. This week, we're returning to the (somewhat-) halcyon days of yore with Stephen King.
Joyland (2013) is Stephen King's second novel for Hard Case Crime. His first, The Colorado Kid, was... well, it was a thing. It is my great pleasure to say that Joyland is not only a vast improvement on...
June 3, 2013
Things I Can't Help Thinking About When I Play Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition
How quickly does the iron rot? Everyone still has metal weapons, and those must take a lot of effort to make. So it can't be tooquick. And why doesn't armor crumble as well? Or wagon wheels? Or buildings and bridges?
If evil kobold terrorists are trying to bring down Amn, wouldn't they be better off sending out a shipment of rotting nails and watching the Amnish (Amish?!) infastructure crumble?
Isn't the bigger problem the fact that bandits outnumber farmers 30:1? Or that the entire economy...
May 31, 2013
Stephen King's Joyland: Pulp & Popcorn Tour
Stephen King'sJoyland- the latest Hard Case Crime - comes out next Friday. The author is encouraging people to "stir their sticks" and go buy a copy of the book from their local bookstore. (A great philosophy, although apparently we're all pretending "Ur" never happened. If King's good with that, so am I.)
To support the stick-stirring, Titan have put a vintage popcorn machine on tour, accompanied by four "Hollywood Girls" (sounds like a burlesque night, actually from the book), dressed to...
Underground Reading: Night Walker by Donald Hamilton
This is the latest installment in our scheme to review each and every Hard Case Crime publication, one every week.You can follow along here.
Donald Hamilton was prolific writer of hard-boiled espionage fiction. I've always classified him as slightly more machothan his contemporaries (especially Stephen Marlowe), but also, in his favour, a bit edgier.
Hamilton wasn't scared of writing flawed characters, and his success with the modern reader relies a great deal on how well those characters (...
May 30, 2013
Jack Vance 28.8.16 – 26.5.13 by David Gullen
Truly, one of the great ones has gone.
First and foremost,
my thoughts are with his family and friends and I hope they can all take
comfort from how much Vance’s writing was loved by fans and admired by writers
and critics. I am right there with them. Jack’s writing, every single word, is
on my bookshelves. I have read his books until they fell apart and then I
bought new ones, and will continue to do so.
Blind since a disastrous operation to preserve his weak eyesight
in the 1980s, Vance co...
