Black Gate – Adventures in Fantasy Literature

By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: The Birth of Conan Scholarship

Monday, September 14, 2026 Bob Byrne Comments 2 comments

We’re back for week two of Cimmerian September. Hopefully you saw last week’s post on Marvel’s King Conan comic, which I read for the very first time, to write about. Having read three, it definitely ranks below the two long-running series’ it followed: The Savage Sword of Conan, and Conan the Barbarian, for me.

Some of you know I had a hand in Hither Came Conan, from Rogue Blades Foundation. It is a SUPERB collection of essays on the original Conan stories, from a veritable Hall of Fame of Robert E. Howard scholars and fans. You read some of the essays in the book here at Black Gate, first. Jason Waltz expanded it greatly, incorporating the terrific blog series done by the late, terribly missed, Howard Andrew Jones, and Bill Ward. he also commissioned some new essays, never seen before. I penned a few new ones, including a look at the foundation stone of Conan scholarship.

I came to the REH world from the Sherlock Holmes universe, where writings about Holmes (and Arthur Conan Doyle) probably exceed that of any other fictional character. I certainly contributed my share. As Christopher Morley famously said, “Never have so many written so much about so little.” I brought that Sherlockiana feel to the works of Two Gun Bob. You can find links to all my pieces here at Black Gate, at the end of this article.

But first, read the last essay from Hither Came Conan: REH, two fans, and the Birth of Conan Scholarship.

Sherlockians not named Jon Lellenberg (Jon and I were Solar Pons friends, but he was a cranky Holmes guy) unequivocally point to Signor Ronald Knox’s essay, Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes, as the start of Sherlockian scholarship – even though it’s satire.

Peter Schuyler Miller and Dr. John Clark have that honor regarding Conan and Robert E. Howard. I wrote a bit about that.

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Weird Times 5: Food

Sunday, September 13, 2026 Matthew David Surridge Comments 1 comment

**A postcard showing an early-20th century Horne & Hardart automat**

This is the fifth post in a series reflecting on the world of 1920s as a background for discussing the early issues of Weird Tales. Imagine that you’re an American in a big city in 1923, and you’re taking a walk to the newsstand to buy the first issue of a new pulp fiction magazine. What sort of things might you see? What do those things suggest about ways people think? What do they say about the stories they tell?

Let’s say you get hungry as you walk along, and think about getting some food later. Maybe you see a restaurant, and a grocery store near it. What kind of food will you be able to buy in the store? And what sort of a restaurant are you looking at? There are a lot of potential answers to that second question, but I want to focus on one admittedly unusual possibility. If you’re in the right city, especially New York or Philadelphia, maybe you have the chance to pop into an automat. And in New York, you might even spot a future Weird Tales writer drinking the hot chocolate.

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Ad Review: The Dragon Magazine 41, Part I

Saturday, September 12, 2026 Steven H Silver Comments 4 comments

The Dragon, Issue 41, cover by James Holloway

In August of 1980, I wandered into Klipper’s, my local toy shop that had a counter devoted to Dungeons and Dragons and other role playing games, and picked up a copy of The Dragon, issue 41. It was the first issue I purchased. On the cover, by James Holloway, a man in a wizard’s robe carrying a staff was walking a lizard child carrying a lunchbox to school, while the human students were starting wide-eyed.

At the time, I was most interested in the parts of the magazine that could most directly be added to my game. Dragon’s Bestiary, introducing the silkie and tomb tapper, the Giants of the Earth, which not only gave me heroes I could use, but introduced me to fantasy novels to track down, the Bazaar of the Bizarre. I remember incorporating the idea of dragon’s blood advanced by Robert Plamondon into my campaign. I ran my players through The Halls of Beoll-Dur, and enjoyed the exploits of Finieous Fingers.

Other parts were of lesser interest. I was not playing Metagaming’s Melee, which seven pages and four articles were devoted to. Similarly, the Avalon Hill articles by John Prados and Tom Wham were not things I was looking for at that time. Since I didn’t have a TRS-80, the computer program offered by Mark Herro didn’t offer me anything. The article on Napoleonic guerilla warfare was targeted at wargamers, not RPGers.

Revisiting this issue 46 years later, I’m looking at a different aspect entirely. I found myself wondering “What was advertised in that issue of The Dragon and did any of the advertisers make enough of a splash to still be around after all this time?”

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Forgotten Authors: John Lymington

Friday, September 11, 2026 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

John Lymington was born on April 21, 1911 in London, England. His birth name was John Richard Newton Chance. His father was Dick Chance, who served as the managing editor of Amalgamated Press. Raised in London, he attended a private school and then went on to technical college with the intention of becoming a civil engineer or quantity surveyor (insert Ethel the Aardvark). Instead, by 1932, he decided to work full time as a writer.

He learned to fly in 1928 and during World War II served as a flight instructor for the Royal Air Force, based out of the Cotswolds. He served there, overseeing training at three different airfields until 1943, when he was given indefinite leave and eventually invalided out of the service as a flight lieutenant. Around the time he was put on leave, he met Shirley Savill, who was serving as a WAAF section officer and the two married on July 22, 1943. Following the war, they settled in Hampshire, where they had three sons. By 1956, they had moved to the Isle of Wight, where Lymington managed a pub.

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Dark Muse News: Mad Shadows Book Four: All the Colors of Darkness by Joe Bonadonna

Thursday, September 10, 2026 SELindberg Comments 3 comments

*Mad Shadows 4: All of Colors of Darkness* by Joe Bonadonna (305 pages, July 18, 2026). Book design by Ruth de Jauregui

Some mysteries leave no fingerprints or footprints — only shadows, strange colors, and the dead. As Dorgo the Dowser investigates necromancers, demons, and a zombie plague, he discovers that darkness comes in many shades.

Book 1: Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser blessed our bookshelves in 2011 (winning the 2017 Golden Book Readers’ Choice Award for Fantasy). The protagonist wields a dowsing rod to sense otherworldly signatures, but this is no Harry Potter wand trickery. Bonadonna’s style is more in line with Michael Shea and Fritz Leiber, and his Mad Shadows tackles supernatural mysteries. In television terms, this would appeal to fans of The X-Files , Supernatural, or Grimm. The author has been a blogger and regular guest at Black Gate forever, and his love for cinema shines through his work. We at Black Gate have already tracked Dorgo’s adventures across three volumes, so we provide a tour guide here to showcase the series.

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Samurai Noir Meets Boardroom Politicking: The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee

Wednesday, September 9, 2026 Soyka Comments 3 comments

*The Last Contract of Isako,* by Fonda Lee (Orbit, May 5, 2026). Cover by Thomas Walker

I spent my professional working life as a freelancer, temporarily employed by a various corporations, ad and media companies, start-ups, and consultants on a project, on-call, or contractual for a stated number of months basis. Work might last a month or two, sometimes as much as a year, and then I never hear from the employer again; others develop into long-term relationships, albeit at time with gaps (sometimes long gaps) between assignments.

As a “disposable asset,” I cost the organization less (even as I earn higher pay because there is no overhead expense) and am easier to terminate than a salaried employee. While in today’s gig economy job-seekers often have little choice but to settle for contract work, I turned down offers of full-time permanent employment (though “permanent” is a misnomer given the trend of corporate “restructurings” and “force redeployments” and other such euphemisms to disguise layoffs).

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Richard Stark’s Parker, Part 7: The Outfit

Tuesday, September 8, 2026 Van Allen Plexico Comments 4 comments

The third Parker novel: The Outfit (Pocket Books, 1967)

What is it?

Volume 3 of Richard Stark’s Parker series of crime novels. It is also the third part of the unofficial Outfit Trilogy, the first three books in the series, in which Parker goes up against an organized crime syndicate.

Quick and Dirty Summary

After surviving an assassination attempt by a killer hired by the Outfit, Parker decides it’s time to settle matters with organized crime once and for all.

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By Crom, It’s Cimmerian September: Marvel Does King Conan

Monday, September 7, 2026 Bob Byrne Comments 0 Comment

Even as another Summer of A (Black) Gat in the Hand ran in my Monday morning slot (nine years now!), I’ve been spending a lot of time in Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone on West 35^th Street, in Manhattan. But I didn’t feel like I could miss out on Cimmerian September. A few of you may recall that last year I joined in the month-long celebration of Robert E. Howard’s mighty-thewed sword slinger.

Later this month I will be on the third and final Solomon Kane Youtube panel by the Robert E. Howard Foundation (here’s the first one). So, getting my REH on this month.

I’ve said that I came late to REH. I was in my forties and my young son would play with the wooden train sets in the kids playroom at Barnes and Noble. One day I picked up the first Del Rey Conan and read it for a bit. I ended up getting it later. And Robert E. Howard would ascend the ranks to surpass all my other favorite writers, with the exception of John D. MacDonald.

My buddy Howard Andrew Jones would stick a verbal elbow in my ribs that I was a rookie sword and sorcery fan, and never changed that opinion, as I still hadn’t shown any interest in C.L. Moore’s Jirel of Joiry (hey – I’m interested in what I’m interested in). But I made up a lot of Conan ground (I had read Moorcock and Leiber by junior high), and I can hold my own in the REH room now.

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Mary Poppins by PL Travers

Sunday, September 6, 2026 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 12 comments

Mary Poppins gave a superior sniff.

“Don’t you know,” she said pitingly, “that everybody’s got a Fairyland of their own?”

Ultimately, I have Baird Searles (or you have to blame) to thank for pointing to P.L. Travers‘ original Mary Poppins books. To quote the entry in his A Reader’s Guide to Fantasy (1982),

Those who know P.L. TRAVER’s acerbic creation, Mary Poppins, only through the persona of Julie Andrews, do not really know Mary Poppins, despite the best efforts of that charming actress. Mary Poppins seldom has a kind word for anyone, almost never smiles except at heir own prim reflections, and can get four children washed and in bed with No Nonsense Whatsoever.

I didn’t rush out and buy the books, but his words always lingered in my memory, and when I saw the books for sale in the old Borders in the World Trade Center, I bought the first one, Mary Poppins (1934), and promptly devoured it. Strains of the book and its sequels can be heard in the Julie Andrews’ movie, but there are deeper, more mythic moments that I imagine Walt Disney wanted no part of.

Travers was born Helen Lyndon Goff in Australia in 1899. She took to the stage as a teenager, creating for herself the stage name Pamela Lyndon Travers. For several years she traveled in Australia and New Zealand as part of a Shakespearean company. In New Zealand, she became a published poet and later a primary writer for the women’s sections in a Christchurch newspaper.

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Into the Weird: Weird Tales, May 1923 (Volume 1, Number 3) Part 1

Sunday, September 6, 2026 Matthew David Surridge Comments 7 comments

*Weird Tales*, May 1923, front and back covers

The third issue of Weird Tales saw the magazine experiment with a significant change in presentation. The first two issues had been a standard pulp size, about 6 inches by 9; the May 1923 issue went to the bedsheet format, a bit more than 9 inches by 12, while cutting the number of pages from 192 to 120. Open the issue, or look through a pdf file, and further changes become apparent.

The layout’s gone to three columns of text instead of two. There are two reprints in the issue, one of them printed at a reduced type size, presumably to fit the space available. And the magazine boasts interior artwork for the first time, with nine stories getting uncredited illustrations; black-and-white line drawings, usually with heavy hatching and cross-hatching.

The artist was presumably this issue’s cover artist, William Heitman, who seems to have done all the interior artwork in Weird Tales’ first year. Heitman’s two-colour cover image is simple, bordering on crude, but conveys a mood. The blurb on the cover is for A. G. Birch’s “The Moon Terror,” though there’s nothing in the story like the picture, for reasons which we’ll come to later on in this post. The colour scheme of the cover’s similar to the last issue, with solid red and black, but the logo’s the third in three issues — though the magazine’s subhead, “The Unique Magazine,” has remained consistent.

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