Status Updates From Tales of Dungeons and Dragons

“The Bat King” by James Hilton has some great claustrophobic moments of being trapped in a cave with not light and...something else. But the ending was an oddly muddled Robinson Crusoe returning to civilization, finding that life has passed him by, and failing to come to grips with it.

“The Dualitists” by Bram Stoker was a nasty little story that could be read as a black satire of the privileged class and what that allows them to get away with.

There are some odd attribution choices in this book. For example, “The Challenge from Beyond” was only attributed to Howie, not by the full round robin of participants. Also, neither of the two pieces that Bloch worked on included both participating authors. So while there’s some scholarly work, there also some unusual blind spots.

This is not an anthology that has any relation to the product that was distributed by TSR. Instead this is an anthology like a deep-cut mix-tape. It has all the usual suspects, but instead of their usual selections, the choice was made to share something obscure or painfully out of print. A number of stories have returned to circulation after the release of this book.