Monster Mayhem, Part I

Monster Mayhem, Part I

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Kong: Skull Island (Warner Bros. Pictures, March 10, 2017)

In a slight deviation from our usual fare, for this list I am simply highlighting my favorite monster movies. So, no first time watches, and I’m not sure how many of these are still free to stream (but I suspect most of them if you are good at exploring). Also there are 21 films in this list, in no particular order, because I’m feeling saucy.

Let’s go!

Kong: Skull Island (2017)

Let’s get the histrionics out of the way. Yes, I’m choosing this over the 1933 original, but that’s not to say that I don’t love the Merian C. Cooper/Ernest B. Schoedsack/Willis O’Brien classic. For nostalgic reasons, that film will always hold a special place, but for sheer entertainment value, I’m choosing Jordan Vogt-Roberts’ love letter to the monster mashes of old.

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Tor Double #14: Poul Anderson’s The Saturn Game and Gregory Benford and Paul A. Carter’s Iceborn

Tor Double #14: Poul Anderson’s The Saturn Game and Gregory Benford and Paul A. Carter’s Iceborn

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Cover for The Saturn Game by NASA
Cover for Iceborn by Marx Maxwell

The Saturn Game was originally published in Analog in February, 1981. It was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, winning the latter. The Saturn Game is the second of three Anderson stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series after No Truce with Kings.

In 1978, Andre Norton published the novel Quag Keep, widely considered to be the first representation of role playing games in fiction. Norton’s story had a role player fall into Gary Gygax’s World of Greyhawk and live out the sort of adventures that occur in role playing games. By 1981, role playing had become more broadly established, although still niche, especially when compared to today’s popularity. In 1981, Larry Niven and Steven Barnes published Dream Park, in which an amusement park ran what were essentially Live Action Role Playing Games. In the same year, Poul Anderson published The Saturn Game, in which a fantasy role playing game was used in a variety ways on a mission to Saturn.

The Saturn Game begins in the middle of a role-playing session as Anderson’s characters are killing time during the long journey to Saturn. In this sequence, Anderson introduces the reader to the characters, both who they are and who they portray in the game. One of the intriguing things about the importance of the game to the characters is that they are living an adventure: the flight to Saturn, but still feel the need to escape into their world of adventure, although not all of the characters play the game. …

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Goth Chick News: Something Wicked (and Corporate-Funded) This Way Comes

Goth Chick News: Something Wicked (and Corporate-Funded) This Way Comes

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Universal Horror Unleashed

In a move that has us polishing our Doc Martin boots and doing a goth happy dance, Universal Destinations & Experiences has officially announced plans to unleash its first-ever year-round horror destination in the Midwest. It’s called Universal Horror Unleashed: Chicago, and it’s set to rise from the bones of the old Tribune Distribution Center at 700 W. Chicago Ave; somewhat ironically, only footsteps from the new Bally’s Casino, which is generally populated by zombies. Groundbreaking kicks off in early 2026, with doors creaking open in 2027.

So, what is Universal planning? Consider it a haunted house on performance-enhancing drugs. We’re talking about over 110,000 square feet of immersive horror experiences, ghoulish bars, monster merch, and interactive stage shows. According to Universal’s promises (which we’ll hold them to, with pitchforks if necessary), this isn’t just a walkthrough attraction; it’s an ever-evolving horror campus that pulls from both classic monsters and modern nightmares.

Why did Universal choose Chicago you ask (besides our weather being a horror in itself)? Good question. Chicago isn’t exactly known for year-round scream parks, unless you count the CTA Red Line after midnight.

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The Last Legionnaire: Jim Shooter, September 27, 1951 — June 30, 2025

The Last Legionnaire: Jim Shooter, September 27, 1951 — June 30, 2025

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Jim Shooter, photo by Alan Light

Jim Shooter, a precocious kid from Pittsburgh who started writing comic book stories at thirteen and who then went on to have one of the most consequential careers in the history of mainstream comics as Marvel’s editor-in-chief, has died at the age of seventy-three.

Shooter was appointed to Marvel’s top editorial position in January, 1978, and during his controversial decade at Marvel’s helm (he was fired in April, 1987), he left an unmistakable imprint on the company and on the comic book industry as a whole.

Most comics historians and many of the artists and writers who worked under him agree that Shooter made many positive and badly needed changes early on (such as returning art to artists and giving artists and writers royalties in certain circumstances) but later became increasingly rigid and dictatorial, and people have already spent many years and will doubtless spend many more trying to reach a just assessment of the pros and cons of his tenure at Marvel. (You can find a detailed account of those years in Sean Howe’s excellent Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, though of course some people say the book is too hard on Shooter while others say that it isn’t hard enough.)

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Why Did This Lot of Science Fantasy Digests Sell for $1,580? Michael Moorcock, That’s Why

Why Did This Lot of Science Fantasy Digests Sell for $1,580? Michael Moorcock, That’s Why

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28 UK Science Fantasy Magazines, sold last week on eBay for $1,580.55

After 25 years of buying vintage digest magazines on eBay, I’m rarely surprised. But I was left with my jaw hanging open last week when a set of 28 Science Fantasy magazines offered on eBay (above) blew past my $98 maximum bid, and ended up selling 9 minutes later for $1,580.

That’s not normal. I bought a set of 39 issues of its sister magazine New Worlds just a few days earlier for $70, not even $2 per issue. Copies of Science Fantasy do tend to command higher prices, but not that much higher. So what’s going on?

It didn’t take long to figure out. Turns out the lot happened to include the June 1961 issue, containing Michael Moorcock’s “The Dreaming City,” the first appearance of Elric of Melniboné.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: More Weird Menace: Robert E. Howard’s Conrad and Kirowan

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: More Weird Menace: Robert E. Howard’s Conrad and Kirowan

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“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.”

– Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

So basically, I don’t do horror. Robert E. Howard is my second-favorite writer in any genre (trailing only John D. MacDonald), and I’m not really even that into his horror stuff. “Pigeons from Hell” is considered one of his best stories, but I don’t really like it. Other than a few exceptions, like the terrific Robert R. McCammon, and F. Paul Wilson, horror doesn’t work for me (no, I don’t really care for Lovecraft, either, though I’m well-versed thanks to those old Del Rey paperbacks).

But I do like several stories which are in Del Rey’s The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard, such as Solomon Kane’s “Rattle of Bones.” There’s an upcoming post on “Out of the Deep,” and we are about to talk about his Conrad and Kirowan tales, which are part of the Cthulhu Mythos.

SPOILER WARNING – Look…the story I’m about to discuss is eighty-one years old. And it’s readily available. If you read my stuff here, you know I try to minimize spoilers. But you’ve had a lot of opportunities to read Robert E Howard. You have been warned.

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Daughter of DAW: An Interview with Publisher Betsy Wollheim, Part I

Daughter of DAW: An Interview with Publisher Betsy Wollheim, Part I

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Betsy Wollheim

This interview was transcribed from a Zoom meeting of the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society on June 14, 2024, conducted by Darrell Schweitzer and hosted by Miriam Seidel.

Miriam Seidel: Betsy Wollheim has been a leading figure in SF and fantasy publishing for many decades, beginning as an editor at DAW Books in 1975, and taking over the company as president of DAW Books in 1985 from her father Donald A. Wollheim. She ran DAW with co-publisher Sheila E. Gilbert until Gilbert’s retirement recently. During her career she has worked with such noted authors as C.J. Cherryh, Tad Williams, Patrick Rothfuss, Nnedi Okorafor, Kristen Britain, Saladin Ahmed, David Gerrold, Tanith Lee, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Wole Talabi, among others.

In 2012 she became the first female long-form editor to win the Hugo Award during her lifetime. [In 1986, Judy-Lynn del Rey won, but posthumously, and the Hugo was refused by her husband, Lester del Rey. –DS] In 2018 Betsy was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from World Fantasy. In 2022 DAW was purchased by Thinkingdom Media Group of Beijing to be the SF/F publishing line of Astra Publishing House. Betsy continues to lead her list as publisher of DAW with her former employees and authors on behalf of Astra.

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It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos, Part III

It’s All Rather Hit-or-Mythos, Part III

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The Curse (Trans World Entertainment, September 11, 1987) and In the Tall Grass (Netflix, October 4, 2019)

Yes, a new watch-a-thon, featuring me, a hopeless procrastinator, plumbing the depths of cinematic misery for your entertainment.

This time around, I will be watching Lovecraftian and Lovecraftian-adjacent films, and as usual they must be films I’ve never seen before (which makes the task trickier and bound for disaster).

If you don’t know anything about Lovecraft’s writings, cosmic horror, the Mythos, or Cthulhu, panic not. Onwards!

The Curse (AKA The Farm) (1987) – Tubi

Directed by David Keith (no, the other one), The Curse is a slightly faithful adaptation of ‘The Color Out of Space,’ just without any, um, colors.

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Tor Doubles #13: Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Blind Geometer and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The New Atlantis

Tor Doubles #13: Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Blind Geometer and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The New Atlantis

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Cover for The New Atlantis by Michael Böhme
Cover for The Blind Geometer by Peter Gudynas

The New Atlantis was originally published in The New Atlantis and Other Novellas of Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg and published by Hawthorn Books in May, 1975.  It was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award and won the Locus poll.

The story opens with Le Guin’s narrator, Belle, returning home from a Wilderness Week aboard a bus where another passenger attempts to engage her in conversation, noting that a new continent is rising in the ocean, either the Atlantic or Pacific, but scientists have little information about it to go on. This exchange allows Le Guin to provide the reader with information about the climate change that is affecting her world. Manhattan underwater and parts of San Francisco are flooded.

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Goth Chick News: BGPCZ Solos into the Unknown at the Haunted America Conference

Goth Chick News: BGPCZ Solos into the Unknown at the Haunted America Conference

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Haunted American Conference

By Black Gate Photog Chris Z

So, sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…..

It was just another typical Friday night in the Goth Chick News bunker filling out expense reports for her Gothness when a call came in over “Zuni” (Goth Chick’s version of “Alexa”). It was the “Big Cheese” John O informing me that since GC is out on assignment (attending Gothicon… don’t laugh it’s a real thing) I would need to fill in on a ghostly adventure traveling to an exotic locale. Before I could even react, a puff of air, a prick on my neck and darkness.

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